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Here is a shot of the "new" rudder control horn brace. Contrary to Van's instructions, DO NOT cut along the guide holes - or you won't have edge distance. After Shannon got off the phone with Van's (who said the same thing), Shannon went to work on this new part and cut it with ample room to spare. Then he'd fit it, see where more needed to be taken off, tried it again, and repeated as necessary. The little ridges you see at the bottom used to be the guide holes. Shannon filed them down so there would be no sharp edges. Here we are primed and ready for assembly.
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Easter Weekend, March 26th, 2005
Sunday we started by attaching the rudder stiffners. This utilizes a back-riveting method in which you put all the rivets in, put tape on the heads (so they don't all fall out when you flip it over), then come in from the other side with the rivet gun and smash 'em. This is a shot of me putting the rivet tape on.
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Another big section finished! All the rudder stiffners in! Now we have to fabricate our own brake to bend this piece further. It is a scary proposition because we've read a lot on how people have done this wrong and ended up with a crack in their rudder later. So then we head to Lowe's and pick up the Van's-recommended materials list to make our own brake.
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After we research other RV builders websites to get some insight on this break, we make ours using 2x8 boards with 4 hinges to attach them together. One website suggested leaving an 1/8" gap between the two boards for an effective brake, so thats what we did. Here's Shannon pushing down trying to bend it further down to make a sharp bend as Van's depicts in the manual (though sometimes I think they could've sprung for a better graphic artist for their manuals).
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My turn! Since I have the ever-present mind to take pictures and update the website, I typically get left out of pictures unless I set the camera on a timed shot. Shannon is getting much better at taking pictures of me too now. You may be thinking, "this is a staged shot!". It is. But honestly, we seem to be consistently accomplishing tasks as a team vs. one-at-a-time, so pictures are often an afterthought. So bear with us if we appear "fake" - we're just trying to capture the moment.
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This is after we attach the rudder skeleton (inner structure). Next step will be to drill the rest of the structure, disassemble, deber, dimple, and prime. Sounds like a lot, but it isn't - just the outer edge since everthing in the middle is already riveted. The next scary part is rolling the forward tab of the skin to attach at the middle. For those of you who may be confused by this, look at where Shannon's hand is. The spar is just inside that opening (you can see the clecos), the remaining edge on the skins here must be "rolled" and connected in the middle to create an enclosed, rounded part. We should be doing that later this week, so stay tuned! There is definately more to come. Happy Easter!
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