1001001
Well Known Member
OK, maybe I'm making too much out of this, but hey, I'm new at all this so I thought I'd bounce it off of folks.
It wasn't until I began to work on the spars in my wing kit that I noticed a couple of areas of what looks like minor damage suffered in shipping or packaging. I didn't notice them until I pulled the plastic bags off the spar assemblies--the bags were not themselves damaged. To me the damage appears minor enough not to require replacement but I feel I should do something to prevent future cracking and/or corrosion.
My questions here are mainly:
1. Have you seen similar blemishes/damage on your spars as shipped?
2. How have you corrected/handled these?
My thoughts on these are to lightly deburr/file/sand in the area of damage and then recoat in some way. Since the spars are factory anodized, I want to make sure that by making repairs here I won't be damaging anything further. Since the anodized aluminum has an enhanced layer of surface oxidation as a barrier, I wonder about the best way to recoat these areas. What would you do? I can see basically two practical options: first, etch with Alumiprep and apply Alodine to the affected area. The second option would be to prime with self etching primer with or without an Alumiprep step. Anyone know how alodine and/or Alumiprep will interact with the aluminum oxide layer of the anodizing at the edges of the repaired area?
One other mostly unrelated question: I found, on the right main spar, one oversized rivet. I assume the installation of the original (AD6?) rivet failed and required the hole to be drilled out and the rivet replaced with a larger rivet. Is this common to find in factory assemblies? I'm not concerned so much as curious.
It wasn't until I began to work on the spars in my wing kit that I noticed a couple of areas of what looks like minor damage suffered in shipping or packaging. I didn't notice them until I pulled the plastic bags off the spar assemblies--the bags were not themselves damaged. To me the damage appears minor enough not to require replacement but I feel I should do something to prevent future cracking and/or corrosion.
My questions here are mainly:
1. Have you seen similar blemishes/damage on your spars as shipped?
2. How have you corrected/handled these?
My thoughts on these are to lightly deburr/file/sand in the area of damage and then recoat in some way. Since the spars are factory anodized, I want to make sure that by making repairs here I won't be damaging anything further. Since the anodized aluminum has an enhanced layer of surface oxidation as a barrier, I wonder about the best way to recoat these areas. What would you do? I can see basically two practical options: first, etch with Alumiprep and apply Alodine to the affected area. The second option would be to prime with self etching primer with or without an Alumiprep step. Anyone know how alodine and/or Alumiprep will interact with the aluminum oxide layer of the anodizing at the edges of the repaired area?
One other mostly unrelated question: I found, on the right main spar, one oversized rivet. I assume the installation of the original (AD6?) rivet failed and required the hole to be drilled out and the rivet replaced with a larger rivet. Is this common to find in factory assemblies? I'm not concerned so much as curious.
