OK now I’m really starting to regret buying a cheap compressor. While backriveting today it lost pressure again and I spent the next few hours fixing it. Seemed like a jammed or dirty valve in one cylinder so I opened it up and cleaned and reassembled it.

 

 Still not pressure. Further investigation revealed a small gap in the cylinder head gasket between the high and low pressure sides. Tiny, but aparently enough to render that cylinder useless. No where was open to try and find a replacement so I patched it with some rubber from a rubber glove…..yes a glove…and tested it. It works!!

Then later on that day, I went back to the workshop to do some more building and guess what…the compressor wouldn’t start. Just a BAD noise coming from the motor. I think either the motor or capacitors are fried.

I’m ordering a new Hindin Marquip 16 tomorrow!!

Backriveted the elevator stiffeners to the skins. Pretty straight forward although the rear-most rivet in each stiffener was quite tricky to get to. Had to ‘open up’ the skins a bit to get in there with the rivet gun.

 I backriveted the nutplates for the trin access panel in with NAS 1097 (aka ‘oops’) rivets. These have a smaller head so could be machine countersunk rather than dimpled. Worked out great. See below:

Shot the primer on the elevator stiffeners and skins and also the Right Rudder skin and associated stiffeners.

There was a lot of prep work due to the large number of parts. The clean and rub down with acetone removes the part labels so from there in I just kept careful track of the parts by keeping them grouped and hanging them to paint and dry in a specific order. Once dry they were re-labeled with the sharpie.

Well after an extended period away from the project over Christmas it was good to get back into my workshop again. After a quick tidy up I backriveted the stuffeners onto the left rudder skin.

I also clecoed together the rudder tip rib, counterbalance rib and counter balance skin. The new counterbalance rib that Vans sent me is not much better than the first so there is a gap on noe side where the rib flange holds the counterbalance skin away fromt the spar. I think I can gently re-work the flanges on the rib to close the gap.