NO, NOT THAT KIND…
So after trying unsuccessfully to connect with my EAA Technical Counselor to come look at my elevator fiasco I decided to jump in the deep end and attempt a fix myself. After much thought and a few opinions from Van’s Air Force (including one that amounted to, “just give it a big ol’ yank”) I was pretty convinced the fix I had in mind would work. Specifically, my plan was:
- Remove the elevator counterweights
- Drill out all the rivets in the counterweight skins
- Using fluting pliers to impart a corrective bend in the end ribs
- Reattach the skins and counterweights
I started with the right elevator because it had the most interference, figuring if I could get that fixed the left one would be a piece of cake. (Yeah, right.) Step one, unbolt the counterweights. Step two, turn several dozen of the previous builder’s carefully driven rivets into metal confetti:
With the skin removed I had unfettered access to the end ribs and proceeded with bending them (to my will). I created a slightly exaggerated correction figuring that when reattaching the skin (using the same holes) would have a tendency to pull in back towards the h-stab. It did as expected after I clecoed the skin but did leave enough of a gap (3/32″) to resolve the problem.
From here all there was to do was to re-rivet the skins. This went pretty quickly thanks to the pneumatic squeezer I got from Cleveland Aircraft Tool. (I also got a t-shirt but this didn’t materially affect the process.)
Happy with my work on the right elevator I took the night off and tackled the left elevator the next morning. Oddly, even though I now understood the process it still took me about the same time to finish. Here’s a gratuitous time lapse of me drilling out the rivets:
In the end, I spent almost 10 hours correcting an issue that should have been done right in the first place. Happy days!
Building N726AG 