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Day 1 - Already an issue

Girraf

Well Known Member
Friend
First day of many and already need an opinion. I was test fitting the horizontal stab rear spar reinforcements and noticed that the 2 pieces that butt up together to form the spar don't exactly line up. They are about .035" askew. When I lay them end to end without the reinforcement, they are exactly the same size, but as soon as I cleco the supports in there, the parts shift. Is this normal variability in production? It looks to me as though the holes that are punched in the spar halves are in fact just slightly off from eachother.

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Can't see your pics.

The tapered spar reinforcements have to be radiused to fit into the flanges in order for the match holes to line up. Also, all tooling marks and extra material needs to be filed off. I used a 3M deburring wheel on a bench grinder for this.

With the proper radius and all the holes lining up, you will still have a small gap, end to end between the spar halves.
 
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At the time these photos were taken, the appropriate edges have been broken to get them lying flat inside the spar, all 4 ends radiused around the end holes, but only 1 has been fully polished. I don't believe the offset is caused by the incomplete finishing work on the reinforcements.

When I test fitted them, I had clecos in end holes as well so there shouldn't be any twisting going on.
 
If you have properly radiused the bars to fit the radius of the channels (in this case it takes more than just breaking the edges) and have more clecos outboard make sure they are lined up properly, then one or the other of the spar channels is mis-bent or mis-punched. It’s rare to see that from Van’s but does happen occasionally. I had it happen with an aileron spar. They replaced it no questions after I sent pictures.
 
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