Sonex #1279

Fuselage disassembly

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To fix the incorrect assembly of the side skins, to get at the poorly pulled rivet in the cross box, and to redo a few things in the front fuselage, the front of the fuselage had to be separated from the rear. It was not fully attached but as some of the rivets were poorly done they were a lot harder to remove.

First, get the fuselage up on a worktable. I managed to do this by myself.
Then remove the landing gear, which is held on with a single bolt and friction fit.
Then the motor mount which was just pinned in place.
then drill out a bunch of rivets and undo a few bolts. Hey presto.
I had to take a lot more stuff apart than I expected.
but I’m getting good at removing rivets.
Finally, the culprit has been extracted.
And, the new rivet correctly pulled.
The reason the rivet mushroomed in the wrong place was the cross-box was spaced too far away from the longeron due to this clip being installed before the cross-box was spaced. I will remake this simple clip with the new alignment, although I am not sure how I will drill the rivet holes from inside the cross-box…

I am about 6-8 hours into this repair so far and there is still plenty left to do. Apparently this is what I wanted in a project. It does feel good to see the end result of the repair. However I still have to be very careful when undoing work as it’s easy to damage components, and they can be time-consuming and expensive to replace.

To redo the clip for the cross-box, I first tried marking or spraying paint from the inside to the outside, to mark the holes so I could drill them. This didn’t work as the inside of the box is too tight, so I had to think of something else.

Much too narrow to drill from the inside to the outside or to get a center-punch in there, or even a sharpie.

I ended up using a clip from a failed attempt. I made a template out of it. By shining a light through the rear the holes appeared, and I marked them with a sharpie.

The template was used to center-punch another clip, with the punch spaced slightly to the inside to offset for the thickness of the metal.

Success! My new clip fits. Once it is trimmed and finished it can be installed.

I started giving a thorough and methodical once-over to the remainder of the fuselage. The method is to start at base components and verify if they have been made and if they have been made well.

I wrote this post back in August and am posting it now as I returned to working full-time and started back at school. I’m hoping to spend some time on the airplane during the winter break and also bring it back into my daily routine next year.

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