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Wing Nut plate Question

Stockmanreef

Well Known Member
This might be a dumb question, but.....

I am attaching the nut plates for the access plates. The plans states that one should use K1100-08D. well there certainly not enough of those in the kit. I ran out at after 2 plates.

I have a whole bunch to the K-1100-08. Not dimpled. And I can't seem to find where these would be used, since I am almost done with the wings. so I assume that I am to dimple these and use them.

Why in the world would Van's not put in the correct number of the K-1100-08D?

Are they that much more expensive?
 
This might be a dumb question, but.....

I am attaching the nut plates for the access plates. The plans states that one should use K1100-08D. well there certainly not enough of those in the kit. I ran out at after 2 plates.

I have a whole bunch to the K-1100-08. Not dimpled. And I can't seem to find where these would be used, since I am almost done with the wings. so I assume that I am to dimple these and use them.

Why in the world would Van's not put in the correct number of the K-1100-08D?

Are they that much more expensive?

Van's buys the bags from some other vendor and they don't do a good job of quality control. If the weight is right, they ship. Just do inventory on the bags in the future, and check all nut plates for correct size. [Edit: this is old information provided to me years ago when I called Vans ,IIRC, maybe a short term experiment. Apologies to Vans - see Scotts comments below.]

When this happened to me, I just ordered a bunch of extra nut plates of various sizes and configurations. It is recommended. Don't worry, you will get "nut plate savvy" pretty quickly.
 
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One of the best time saving things you can do on your aircraft is to use the 1097 rivets for the plate nuts. These are the small head "cheater" rivets. One twist with a countersink tool is enough for these rivets. I have been using these for years on many aircraft, no issues.
 
where do you find these rivets? and how does it save any time?

I just squeeze all my nut plate rivet with a pneumatic squeezer. This is quick.
 
Isn't it easier to just dimple the K1100-08 nut plates. Not that I am necessarily in a hurry.

Noooooooo -- do not waste time and damage expensive dies by dimpling nut plates.

What Tom said - - the NAS 1097 rivets are standard shank but smaller head. Searching on VAF using the google search method of "site:vansairforce.com searchterm1 +searchterm2" is what you need to learn.

http://www.vansairforce.com/community/showthread.php?t=56010

The smaller head means no dimple, not on the skin or on the nut plate. Even on .020 thick material. If you just deburr like Tom said with a heavy hand the countersink is adequate to allow flush set. ALL builders use this method in the end. It is super quick and does not compromise the structural integrity of anything. The rivets only hold the plate for threading.

I went to General Aviation Hardware and downloaded the tech data sheets for these rivets and ordered a full assortment. Vans uses only one size and calls them "oops" rivets. They are not just for mistakes.

Happy building - become nut-plate, or plate-nut, experts early and save time.
 
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Typically I use a -3 length for this purpose, but as you get farther along in the kit you will discover that you will use the length that works, which may or may not be the one that is suggested. If you need one longer then -3 you would likely have enough material to countersink the structure.
 
well this is the first time that I have heard of using these rivet. How the heck would a solo builder every figure this out? I just stumble upon it by asking a random question. I would never have thought to search this out.
 
Noooooooo -- do not waste time and damage expensive dies by dimpling nut plates.

What Tom said - - the NAS 1097 rivets are standard shank but smaller head. Searching on VAF using the google search method of "site:vansairforce.com searchterm1 +searchterm2" is what you need to learn.

http://www.vansairforce.com/community/showthread.php?t=56010

The smaller head means no dimple, not on the skin or on the nut plate. Even on .020 thick material. If you just deburr like Tom said with a heavy hand the countersink is adequate to allow flush set. ALL builders use this method in the end. It is super quick and does not compromise the structural integrity of anything. The rivets only hold the plate for threading.

I went to General Aviation Hardware and downloaded the tech data sheets for these rivets and ordered a full assortment. Vans uses only one size and calls them "oops" rivets. They are not just for mistakes.

Happy building - become nut-plate, or plate-nut, experts early and save time.

Section 5 in the construction manual mentions using NAS1097 rivets for installing nutplates as an option.
Van's stocks a broad size range of 1097 rivets. For some reason they are not list in the catalog. If you want them you will have to ask an order person by part #.
 
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well this is the first time that I have heard of using these rivet. How the heck would a solo builder every figure this out? I just stumble upon it by asking a random question. I would never have thought to search this out.

Many things like this come up. Solo builders who stumbled before you will help.

Using the google search will give you much more returns than just looking through this site alone. I don't find the site search function useful, maybe I need training, but the google one is boolean and works well (meaning-I know how to use it well).
 
This might be a dumb question, but.....

I am attaching the nut plates for the access plates. The plans states that one should use K1100-08D. well there certainly not enough of those in the kit. I ran out at after 2 plates.

I have a whole bunch to the K-1100-08. Not dimpled. And I can't seem to find where these would be used, since I am almost done with the wings. so I assume that I am to dimple these and use them.

Why in the world would Van's not put in the correct number of the K-1100-08D?

Are they that much more expensive?

Following up on this after reanalyzing the parts count in the wing kit...

The parts counts in the hardware bags shipped with an RV-14 wing kit were verified to be correct.
Since the two different nutplates being discussed are very similar, there is probably only two explanations.

- Dimpled nutplates were installed at locations where undimpled ones were meant to be used.
or

- The wrong nutplates were put into one of the hardware bags and it was not detected when the kit inventory was (hopefully) done.


BTW, the hardware bags are not produced by some outside vendor that doesn't care about quality control. They are packed by Van's employees that do care and work hard to do it right. With thousands of different items
in the inventory, occasionally a mistake is made.
That is why the first thing builders are instructed to do is inventory the kit contents. It helps catch packing mistakes, and it gets builders familiar with part numbers, and recognizing what the parts look like.
 
At my stage of the build, I've got a few sets of dimple dies. The worn ones are used for nutplates, set up in my C-frame dimpler. Sooooo much easier than countersinking, and you can use standard rivets.

Early on, I made a wooden jig to hold nutplates for machine countersinking. It was tedium city.
 
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The best thing that I did once inventory ran low was to order a stock of nutplates and rivets from Genuine Aircraft Hardware (http://www.gen-aircraft-hardware.com/). That way I never came close to running out of low-count rivet lengths, and I discovered that there were much better nutplate options.

In fact, even though I am no longer building I intend to purchase more hardware from these folks. Order a printed catalog, though, because the website is a bit funky.
 
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