Today I took the camera to the hangar to
photograph the damage done yesterday when the right wing was blown off of the
wing rack by a wind gust. The wing tip
was tweaked and some of the skin under
the wing at the end were bent. The
bottom edge of the rear spar was bent.
The root end of the wing also suffered some damage. The bottom of the rear spar was bent and the
skin had some wrinkles in it.
The root
end of the flaperon skin was bent and there was a kink in the trailing edge
about 1' from the end. The flaperon also
seemed to have a bit of a bind when it was moved from side to side. I took some photos of the damage.
I started
to work on the root end of the wing.
I removed the flaperon. As I removed
the bolt at the root end of the wing it was really had to get the bolt to come
out. After removing it I realized why
the flaperon seemed to be binding. It
was. The holes in the bracket and the
bearing were off by almost ½" from lining up. There was also a bit of a crease in the
trailing edge of the flaperon.
I drilled out the rivets in the wing skin
from the end of the wing back three ribs, and from the mid wing spar to the
rear spar. I pulled the skin back and
found the end of the root wing rib had been bent. I purchased some auto body tools at Harbor
Freight and set to work to straighten the bent section of rib. It worked perfectly. I made a little reinforcement piece to rivet
into the corner of the rib and rear spar.
I also straightened out the edge of the rear spar which was slightly
bent. I used the hammer and dolly to flatten
the wing skin. After straitening all of
the bent pieces I clecoed the wing back together. I retrieved the flaperon and put the bolts
through the brackets and bearings. It
all fits now, just like it did when it was new.
Satisfied with the repair I riveted the root end of the wing back
together.
I then began working on the wing tip. I drilled out the rivets on the skin area next
to the flaperon. Also the narrow piece
of wing skin on the bottom of the wing next to the tip. I also drilled out the rivets on the concave
bottom skin on the wing tip. I drilled
the rivets from the trailing edge to just
about mid-span on the wing. It became obvious the edge of the rear spar
was deformed which cause some wrinkling and bending in the various pieces of
wing skin at the tip. The pictures tell
the tale.
After removing the rivets and looking inside,
the damage was not as bad as it looked.
I was able to bend the end of the rear spar back into line and then
using the body shop tools I straightened out the various bent, tweaked and
wrinkled pieces of skin. After that I
was able to clecoe the wing tip back together and install new rivets.
After riveting the wing tip back together I
decided to put some body filler over the wrinkles I was unable to remove. I also put some body filler on the top of the
wing again.
The Flaperon was next to be repaired. I straightened the skin at the bottom root of
the flaperon. I then began working on
the kink in the trailing edge. With my
duck bill pliers and the auto body hammer I was able to get the flaperon pretty
straight, but I could not remove the dent.
I filled the dent with some body filler.
That's it for today.
