Fuselage Photos (Pg38)

I walked the step into a local weld shop that I knew had done repairs on other RV steps, including one repaired on the plane to avoid having to remove the baggage compartment floor (he charged about 7 times the walk in price to do it on the plane). It might have been a better idea to weld a reinforcement gusset plate in place, effectively increasing the tube wall thickness in high stress area, but I went with straight weld repair and will reconsider that if it cracks again...

Here are some pictures of the weld repaired step:

close up of weld repair from bottom view:

And the weld repaired and primed / painted step bolted and cleco'd in place for riveting:

Wider view, ready for riveting:

With a little help from my wife (her on the outside with rivet gun, me on inside with bucking bar), the step is riveted back in place and ready for reinstalling baggage compartment floor:

Before reinstalling the floor and side panel, I installed nutplates for the sidepanel installation and put access plates in the floor skin so both sides of the torque tube bolt could be reached (the fore-aft bolt attaching tube to ABS blocks). Closer view prior to closeout:

Back

Fuselage: pg 1 | pg 2 | pg 3 | pg 4 | pg 5 | pg 6 | pg 7 | pg 8 | pg 9 | pg 10

pg 11 | pg 12 | pg 13 | pg 14 | pg 15 | pg 16 | pg 17 | pg 18 | pg 19 | pg 20

pg 21 | pg 22 | pg 23 | pg 24 | pg 25 | pg 26 | pg 27 | pg 28 | pg 29 | pg 30

pg 31 | pg 32 | pg 33 | pg 34 | pg 35 | pg 36 | pg 37 | pg 38

This page was last updated on 12/18/11.

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