There was something in the back of my head that I just couldn't resolve and it didn't let me rest, so I just had to go back to the plans and research it a bit more.
On page 10-03 in step 1 it tells you do a lot of stuff to the F-1211G Tail Skid Bracket. In figure 1 it shows that you're supposed to widen the hole to 5/16 and tap the result to a 3/8-16 thread. The problem that I had with this was that it said "1 Inch Deep".
The usual tie down eyebolts you can purchase for this size have a threading that is 1.25" long. Even Van's has them with this length in their catalog. So I started to wonder why the hole would then not be deep enough to fully seat the bolt down to its shoulder. In the evening I posted a question about this on the Van's Airforce Forum and sure enough one builder came back and reported that he had to drill the hole deeper and re-tap it to get the tiedown ring installed. That's exactly what I had been afraid of doing as it would be much harder to do that when the bracket is installed on an airplane.
So I went back to the shop and handled the task of carefully deepen the hole by drilling past the already tapped thread (without marring it) and then tapping the hole so a 1.25" long screw I had lying around would completely seat in the bracket.
So, if you get to this point, make your life easier and drill the hole deep enough right at the first time so you don't have to worry about damaging the threading.
I wrote Ken at Van's an email to see what he thinks about this, if it's a mistake or if there's something else about the eyebolt installation that I just don't know yet.
Anyway, a deeper hole won't hurt but a shallow one certainly could.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment