The wings are very close to complete, just few items left. So, I decided to install the the access panels, so that I can close the wings:
What left is to rivet the platenuts to the bottom Skins, then to screw the access panels
Given that I redid the fuel caps for both left and right fuel tanks, I had to retest both tanks. So, I redid the pressure test with the sraying of soapy water. The test passed. So, now the fuel tanks are complete.
I riveted the flap to the right wing, which went great. It is great to see both the flap and aileron on and rotating.
Then I moved to the left wing. For this one, I had to redo the hinge, since the holes in the previous hinge did not end up having edge distance. After redoing all the drilling, deburring and dimpling, I was finally able to rivet the hinge. However this hinge did not end up being perfectly straight, because of some enlarged holes for which there was no access to enlarge the countersink. So, I waiting to hear from Vans about this one:
So, I switch to working in the aileron and bell-crank. I redid the bell-crank since in the previous one the riveting of the end did not go great. Redoing the bell-crank went smoothly, then I attached the bell-crank to the aileron. Now the aileron for the left wing is moving great as well.
I decided to redo the fuel tank lids after checking with Vans. The issue happen when torqued the bolts after the sealant was dry. I added fuel tank sealant to the outside of the bolts, but Van said that it is not enough.
So I went ahead and removed all the bolts from all the lid for both the left and the right fuel tanks. Then I spent many hours cleaning the lids, the holes and nutplates. Then I reset the bolt with wet sealant again.
We continued on riveting the bottom skin for the right wing. We nearly finished the whole bottom skin, at the exception of the last 2 raws. We ended up having a little incident, dropping the bucking bar inside, we decided to check with Vans before continued.
Then we moved on to the left wing and riveted the whole left bottom wing skin. As well, we finalized the pitot tube installation.
Before closing in the wing. We took pictures of the serial number of the hardware inside.
After some more reading and talking with Vans about riveting the bottom skins and attaching the flaps, I realized that I had to setup the flaps first. So I had to remove all the previous rivets I set in the bottom skin. Then after setting up the flaps. We riveted the bottom inner skin and half of the bottom outer skin for the left wing
I centered the ailerons by creating a jig to set the ailerons at the neutral position. Then, I torqued to setting all the aileron bolts once it is set at neutral. Afterwards, I attached the flaps while making sure that the trailing edge of the aileron and flap align. Afterward I drilled the skin to the brace and flap hinge, in the pre set flap position. After deburing, I dimpled the skin and countersink the brace. Now, the flap hinge is ready to be riveted to the bottom skin.
