Aileron hinge saga continues Readers of an earlier post will recall that I couldn?t remove the screws holding my aileron hinges in place, because whatever was inside the spar, was spinning. Seeing no other way to get to the hardware, I cut an inspection hole in the bottom of the wing. As I suspected, PO had floxed common nuts to the spar and then screwed the hinge to the spar before the flox was cured. More flox had found its way onto the screw threads, effectively sealing the screw to the nut, as well as the nut to the spar. Turns out this is good permanent attachment method, provided you never have to repair anything. To make the repair, nut plates will now be floxed to the spar per plans. I?m going to also add a rivet through one of the ears to minimize torque and the potential for spinning (redundancy). I don?t have any standard rivets long enough, so I guess I?ll pull a blind rivet since I have some of those? A good tip from Tim Bellville in the archives was to let the flox cure around the nut plates, then test the bond by running a screw through the threads. If the bond is no good, you?ll find out real quick, and you can fix it before you close things up. Because the nut plates are so hard and can damage screw threads, I?m tossing the ?test screw? and using a fresh one for the final install (belt AND suspenders, for redundancy, again). Like many of you, I usually run a tap through the nut plates too, but yeah, doing so makes them less effective as self-locking hardware. Props to Dan Heath, Allen Weisner, Brian Kraut and others for their good advice.
Dan
