Friday, February 25, 2011

Left Longeron Bent

This will probably surprise you after my unconditional surrender from yesterday. Trust me, you're not alone. Besides being embarrassed, frustrated and thirsty for retribution there was one thought that made me go back to the battlefield today and lead another attack at the longeron. The thought was this: A few people reported some problems with those dies regarding the tight fit on the flange supporting channel that should dampen the vertical movement of the longeron. Sometimes they had trouble removing the die after squeezing it with a vise as it got stuck on the flange. After all the work I did on the left longeron the upper flange is not straight anymore and rather wavy in some spots. Using those dies would then have the potential of making my problem worse by them getting hopelessly stuck and me ending up reordering at least one longeron ( and losing the die).
So, my conclusion was that it was better to turn my other cheek and try yet again to get this mess cleaned up - at least on the left one. Well, I did and I succeeded. Now that the metal is getting soft in the areas I worked so much before, I could actually do a lot with just manual force and no more insane bashing with a mallet. I did the set of adjusting to the template and correcting vertical movement about 3 or 4 more times and then it was done.




I'm pretty sure that I won't start anything on the right longeron before the dies are here which should happen some time next week. I might do the bend on the tail end and remove the aluminum triangle there but that should be it.
Tomorrow, I'll take a look at the fuel line section 28.

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