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Elongated hole in R901-L-1 stiffener hole

JDA_BTR

Well Known Member
Looks like I am going to build most of my plane twice!!! ugh?.

So I made a very dumb mistake and was forced to drill out a few rivets on R901-L-1, the left rudder skin. I managed to have the drill hole go wide of the rivet, and elongated the hold jaggedly about 1/16 (into the dimple area).

I don't want to just cover it up - I don't think I can anyway. And I haven't got all the stiffeners on that skin, so I'm going to just order a new one?.

The question I have is - can it be drilled as needed without messing up the things it was final drilled to before? That would be the spar and the TE. I'm pretty sure that on the TE I can just use my angle guide and ream the holes down the TE and it will line up fine without having it cleco'd to the AEX and potentially messing up the AEX countersinks with the drill.

I'm also thinking that if I ream the holes that go with the spar that the spacing will line up okay there too. But I'm pretty sure I can final drill the skin to the spar without messing up the spar dimples with the sheet cleco'd on - so I was going to do just that.

Any thoughts?
 
Update: I called and talked with Vans and put an extra hole/dimple/rivet on either side of my oops. I took the point off of the oops hole and smoothed it. I filled most of the oops with a rivet; there is a little open aluminum next to it. It will get puttied with the paint job?. building on.
 
Have you ordered any of the OOPS rivets? They have the same size head as a #40, but the body of the #30, so if the hole is a little too big, the rivet will still hold. Van's sells them and Avery has a kit. There are multiple sizes in the kit Avery sells. That way no one can tell you messed up.

Update: I called and talked with Vans and put an extra hole/dimple/rivet on either side of my oops. I took the point off of the oops hole and smoothed it. I filled most of the oops with a rivet; there is a little open aluminum next to it. It will get puttied with the paint job?. building on.
 
Well the hole was elongated a little bigger than the head. It was more oops than an oops rivet can handle although it is a good thought. I'm pretty happy with the two extra rivets to the stiffener, one on each side. The little defect that is present now will disappear with the paint job?.
 
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