I did my typical two steps forward one step backward tonight, although there's not much I could have done to keep it from happening. I put the gusset in place and started to drill holes through the longeron and into the engine mount bracket. Mind you, all of these holes are in the position the plans say they should be. Unfortunately, my engine mount bracket opens up (the wedge) at the aft edge more than must be typical. I drilled two holes in the forward end, checked it, and realized that if I were to drill my line of rivets all of the way back, most of them would land right on the edge of the steel and have virtually no edge distance. I have always read that the edge distance here is very tight, but I've checked with a number of people, and my brackets are a bigger problem than most. I've emailed Van's to find out what the minimum edge distance is for steel. I also ordered a new gusset. I think I can push the rivet line over another 1/16" and still be okay on my longerons. Hopefully that will give me somewhere between 1/8"-3/16" of edge distance on the steel. If that's not enough, I'm going to be at the mercy of Van's to figure out what to do. The last thing I want to do is replace the engine mount if they say it's not made properly, but that's a possibility I guess. I'd already drilled a few holes before I discovered this issue, so no matter what I do I'll have a rivet line that is a little all over the place. It's all hidden eventually, so I'll just consider it character.
