Right Wing - Rear Channel Riveted ~ Riveting Aviatrix

16JUL2022

On the wing spar tip, the A6 rivets don't look like they pulled correctly. I talked to Zenith about it when we were there picking up the fuselage kit and they said to drill one out and try again. So that's the first thing I did today - drilled out one rivet, pulled it again and it still looked like the others.

Tom came over to look at it and after some Googling and investigation, we determined that the grip range for these rivets may be too large for the overall material thickness at this location. We knocked the stem out of one rivet, trimmed the length down, reinserted the stem and tried pulling that. It still didn't seat fully and it looked like the stem may have pulled a little too far in. We still aren't really sure if there's and issue or what the issue may be. We'll be at AirVenture in a couple of weeks and plan on asking a few folks there to see what the consensus is.

[The phone died when Tom and I were messing around with the rivet, so you won't see all that trial and error in the video]

Then we flipped the wing over and I started riveting in the rear channel, marked & drilled the cable tie locations, and riveted in the cable ties. I chose to install the cable tie holders in between the ribs rather than at the rib location, which is what the assembly guide looks like Zenith did. Sometimes the rivets don't pull completely tight with these plastic tie mounts and since the ribs are structural, I wanted to ensure I had nice snug rivets there. When I was installing the cable tie mounts, I noticed that they weren't fitting completely in between the doublers; one edge was sitting on top of the doubler and causing the mount to sit at a slight angle. So I buzzed the corners a bit on the grinder and filed till they fit.

I did not rivet in the last root rib section on the rear channel today. I wanted to think about how to route the navigation light wires and where I should place the cable tie mounts in this section.