The aft fuselage skin has to be cleco’d in place and then the tail spring mount is temporarily mounted to the aft bulkhead. Placing the aft fuselage skin takes a little bit of thought and a small amount of persuasion. It sits between the F-01410 bulkhead and the lower skin and the edges have to slide between stiffeners and the side skins. It took a bit of time to work this out.
The tail spring mount is then temporarily bolted in place so that two #30 holes can be match drilled in the F-01412 bulkhead where the mount will be riveted to the bulkhead. It also gives the opportunity to see if the bulkhead will need to be trimmed where the mount exits the bulkhead due to the weld which impinges on the skin.
The bulkhead then gets riveted to the aft lower skin. Some of these rivets I managed to squeeze with the yoke but others I needed to use the gun to set. I also went up a size of rivet to a AN426AD3-4 as the 3.5 just didn’t seem long enough.
The spring mount is then riveted to the bulkhead and the whole lot reassembled.
Once the spring mount is in position, the bolts need to be torqued up. I only have a metric torque wrench so a little bit of conversion is required into Pounds-Feet. A static load is also calculated as these are stiff nuts so a true torque has to be calculated in accordance with Van’s instructions. I needed one thick spacer to close the gap between the spring mount and the F-01410 bulkhead.
Once it was cleco’d back together you are told to rivet the aft bottom skin to the F-01411 bulkhead starting in the centre. Due to the tail spring mount mount it is going to be quite difficult to access some of the rivets.
Time for some wiring while I think about it…
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