I worked some more on my RV-4 elevator. I spent most of the day getting very little accomplished on it. It’s almost ready to rivet. I need to get some smaller nails for the close quarter dimpler I have. You use a pop rivet tool, some dies, and a nail to dimple a rivet hole. Once these last few holes are dimpled it’s ready to start riveting the elevator spar to the skin.

I also did some work on my RV-7 horizontal stabilizer skeleton. I alodined the ribs and spars and other raw aluminum stock that goes on there. I have found that the best method when using alodine is to just pour it in a basin and soak the pieces in it. I tried a trick using a long plastic bag to alodine the longer parts but had mixed results. When it comes time to alodine the vertical pieces I may look at a different technique. Here are some pictures of the final product. You can see I need to refine my technique. It’s good enough though and won’t be seen by the general public anyway.

Forward side

Aft side

The bulk of the work on the left hand elevator is now done. All I have to do is add a little more lead to the counterweight and then attach the fiberglass end tip.

I was a little intimidated by the lead counterweight but it turned out to be fairly easy. What I ended up doing was lining the counter balance ribs with aluminum foil as a form for the molten lead. I bought a couple 2lb lead fishing weights from a local bait shop. I then melted them down in a stainless steel measuring cup and poured the lead into the ribs and let it cool in place. I’ll need to repour it though because I have to put a nut and bolt to hold the the weight in place. Having already done it once it won’t be to intimidating next week when I finish up.

Below is a picture of the rod end bearing cut out on the front of the elevator. An acquaintance on an internet form I belong to thought it looked a little chewd up. Hopefully it looks better now.

For those of you who have been keeping track, some cracking was discovered on my left-hand elevator trailing edge.  This was a fairly common problem with the early RV-4 kits.  After consulting with the aircraft kit manufacturor, I decided upon rebuilding the elevator with thicker skins. 

At this point I am now almost done with the left hand elevator.  I just finished mounting the elevator bearings which took some uncharactaristically careful measuring and cutting on my part.  In the photos you can see the bearings and the horizontal stabilizer hinges I had to match the bearings up with.

Here are the holes with the platenuts already revited on

Here’s the bearing installed in the nutplate, also shown is the jam nut

Here are the hinge fittings that I had to carefully match the bearings up with.  Normally when building the entire empanage you would not drill the final positions of these fittings until you had matched them up with the bearings.  I didn’t have that luxury but it still turned out pretty well.  I had to oblong one hole a little but you it doesn’t affect anything, the nutplate provides all the strength.

I’ve been asked by several people for pictures of the cracking I’m experiencing.  I’ve not been able to get any good pictures of the elevator cracks but I did manage to get pictures of the wing skin cracking.  Here is a pic of those cracks.

I can’t stand the fact that those cracks are there on my wing.  I also can’t afford to paint the plane and am planning to polish it.  I can’t polish it with those cracks staring me in the face!!  So, here’s the new plan:

1. Finish the annual
2. Fly the plane a little to get it out of my system
3. Build the new elevators as I have time
4. When the flying is out of my system, begin drilling out ALL the rivets on the inboard top wing panel and replace that skin.
5. Polish the entire aircraft

Yes, I’m crazy but I just really can’t stand keeping the plane with those cracks in the wings.  I’m going to hate polishing the plane but I’ll have to do that myself too.  Okay, last plan.  I promise.

I’ve finally come up with a plan for my cracks. The factory which makes the kit ( Van’s Aircraft ) has said that I can stop drill the cracks and just watch to make sure they don’t spread (which they are not expecting to happen.) I’ve had other advice that I should remove the wing and drill that whole skin off and put a new skin on. The most sensable advice came from a friend who built a similar airplane. Aside from being a Godly man in his own right, he is a retired materials engineer. He agreed that the cracks on the wing skin didn’t pose any hazard to flight but that if it were him he just couldn’t stand looking at them. So I’m going to follow his advice which involves drilling out the rivets in the affected area from the fuel tank all the way back to the trailing spar. Then place a doubler skin on top of this that will cover the entire wing in the affected area. This will do two things; hide the cracks, and provide extra support for errant feet. Once painted over it will look like it was designed that way.

As for the cracks on the trailing edge of the elevator, well, I’m just going to rebuild both elevators. I’m looking at this as an opportunity to replace my manual trim system with electric trim. Just got to get this bird into painting shape!

Just got an email from the factory regarding some cracking in my wing skins.  The official word is no problemo.  I can just stop drill the cracks (making sure not to drill into the spar.)  I’ll have to ream out the elongated hole on my landing gear leg but it’s not critical at this point.  Big sigh of relief.

Oh boy, talk about your crack pot! As I was giving rides to some church kids I noticed some more cracks on my plane. These were on the wing just outboard of the wing walk (where passengers step on the wing.) Not sure really what to do about this one. I’ve got an email in to the factory about this. I’ll enter an update once they advise me.