I've now reached the point where progress looks backwards in pictures. I have a few more things to fabricate for the fuel tank, but for the most part, now I have to start disassembling everything and doing all of the prep work of deburring, dimpling/countersinking, scuffing, priming, etc. I can't say that I'm looking forward to all of that repetitive, mindless work, but it's part of the deal.
I fit the backing plate for the stall horn access plate to the wing. The more I think about this, I don't think I'm going to install the device itself. It's set to give an audible warning about 10 mph above the stall speed. I'll keep thinking about it, but I don't think having a separate warning on top of the AOA information will be helpful. Too much information can be worse than no information sometimes. I'll have the access panel available if I do decide to install it later. If I ultimately get to the point of closing up the wings and decide not to do the stall horn, I'll just fill the pre-punched holes with micro/fiberglass.
I pulled the tank off of the wing to start disassembly and prep work. I drilled the large holes in the skins for the screws that connect the tank to the spar. Then I drilled the temporary pop rivets out of the Z brackets and worked on the row of tank skin to baffle holes. Normally these holes would just be dimpled because of the material thickness, but Van's says to countersink them instead in order to allow the baffle to slide into place easier once assembling with proseal. It felt like it took forever to do, moving clecos over and over and over (move them once so I could peel the blue plastic off, then replace them to countersink the first holes, then move them to countersink the other half, then do it all again on the other side of the tank).
After all of that, things pretty much look the same as when I started. The only real evidence of all the work is the volume of aluminum shavings all over the place.
I pulled the Z brackets off the baffle. All but the innermost bracket get nuplates attached to them (captures the bolt that goes through the spar to attach the tank to the wing). I used a nutplate as a template to drill the rivet holes. I actually have nutplate jigs to do just this task, but of course I don't have this particular screw size. The rivet spacing is the same for all of them, but the large center hole varies in size. The closest one I have is too sloppy to be reliable. All I could think was that if I had a 3D printer I could create a sleeve to go around the center pin in the jig and it would have worked great. I do have a printer coming as a Christmas present, but like everything these days, it's backordered for at least 6 weeks. I got the brackets drilled and deburred eventually. Tomorrow I'll start by deburring the edges and cleaning them up for priming.
