Wait till after painting?

[J Twilbeck]

A poll to the group. I am currrently working on my wings and I will be finishing them up soon. Although, I can't think of a reason to attach the ailerons, flaps, and control tubes until after painting (NOTE: I plan on painting my airplane before it even leaves the shop...and therefore before flying). I see doing a quick test fit, but bolting everything in place and torquing it down seems like a waist since you need to remove it all when you paint and then reinstall again?

Did anyone else just store the wings, ailerons, flaps aside and not install until after paint? Any thoughts and opinions welcome

 

[brad walton]

After test fitting everything, I set it all aside and stored until I painted it, piece by piece, and then final assembled. Only problem is if modifications are necessary, you may have to touch up some areas.

 

[Ron B.]

We did like Brad and no touch ups were required.

 

[DanH]

 

[rleffler]

I painted after everything had been test fitted and aligned. I think this is especially important to ensure your wingtips are correct. If the first time everything is assembled is after paint, you run a risk of having to repaint after making modifications.

Wing tips are all over the map as to quality. Also, how they've been stored can impact the shape. You can make some drift pins and have four friends help, it only takes 10-15 minutes to mount the wing. Then follow the alignment procedures for the flaps, ailerons, and wing tips. Then put everything into storage until you paint.

A good example is Larry's RV-10 (http://www.vansairforce.com/community/showthread.php?t=100929) He's been flying for awhile and found some alignment issues that should have been caught in the build. (He didn't build his RV-10)

I think it's well worth the time spent. Now's the time to catch alignment issues.

 

[J Twilbeck]

Bob,
You have a good point, but I am nowhere near ready to mount a wing. If I understand what you are saying is test fit and align everything while the wing is attached to the fuselage?

....edited later after thinking about it.....the ailerons are installed and neutral positon is found and used to be sure the wing tips line up? Am I understanding that correctly?

 

[rleffler]

Bob,
You have a good point, but I am nowhere near ready to mount a wing. If I understand what you are saying is test fit and align everything while the wing is attached to the fuselage?

....edited later after thinking about it.....the ailerons are installed and neutral positon is found and used to be sure the wing tips line up? Am I understanding that correctly?

Yes, wings mounted, set flaps per instructions, match ailerons to flaps, then hope the wing tips are aligned with ailerons. During the process you adjust control tubes, etc.

Then disassemble and paint. When you do final assembly, then there just should be final tweaks and adjustments, nothing major.

 

[N427EF]

Justin,
You can easily test fit your flaps, ailerons and wingtips ( in that order)
before ever mounting it on the fuselage. There is nothing to fit on the wing,
it's all predrilled and the rear spar is prepunched. There are no 2 ways about it, it only fits one way.
The only thing left to fit is the gap fairing and it too is prepunched. It's the only 2 parts I did not paint before final fit.
The flap skins will need a slight little bit of trimming to fit the fuselage, you can do this after painting.
I did mount all the tail surfaces and final fit the intersection fairing before painting.
There is certainly nothing wrong with test fitting everything first, but it is definitely not needed when it comes to the wing on the RV-10.

 

[Jesse]

The flap hits the rear spar when it's all the way up, so if the wing is in a cradle or on a table, you can align the ailerons to the flaps and the wing tips to the ailerons. You will need to file the end of the flap to fit the fuse when you install, but that's not very visible, so could be done after paint.

As was mentioned, though, it is really easy and quick to pin the wings in place and fit everything, even if just one wing at a time.

 

[brad walton]

Fitting

The first time I fitted the wings, I had three friends help and mount with hardware store bolts. The second time, after paint and lacking patience to line up others (who knew better by now) I mounted them myself with the help of a couple saw horses. RV8 wings without flaps and ailerons weigh about 65 lbs. according to bathroom scales. Incredible they are good to six G's or 10,800 lbs!

 

[BigD]

I test fit the flaps and ailerons and made adjustments to the control rods, knowing it wasn't the final fit, but I wanted to catch any other errors while I still had the wings in the shop. I did find a couple of rivets missing (?) and also had to enlarge the hole in the aft wing bulkhead for the aileron push tube. That's not to say it couldn't be done later. Plus the bottom skins are only clecoed for now so it's going to get worked on again anyway.

==dave==