Mounting the Left Wing - Part 2
TLDR
- Torqued the left wing mounting bolts
- Installed left flap torque tube locking collar
- Connected wing wire harness and pneumatic lines
Details
Bolt Torquing
All 8 bolts through the main spar were installed last time, so today’s work is just torquing them to 55 nm. And also the rear spar bolt (AN5) needs to be torqued to 18 NM. Both tasks went smoothly.
And my friend Brian gave me a creeper to work under the airplane’s belly. It’s much more comfortable than just laying on the floor :=)
Torque Tube Locking Collar
Same as the right side. There are 2 locking collars to install. A smaller one near the wing root, and a longer one connects the flap torque tube with the flap motor tube.
Small locking collar
When I was working on the right wing, it was really painful to drill the hole for the small locking collar when the wing was already attached. So this time I pre-aligned the tubes and pre-drilled the hole before attaching the wing. So once the wing was attached I just needed to rivet it. Using a hand riveter in the space was still extremely painful, but not as bad as drilling.
Large locking tube
The large one was easier to install since the space is much more accessible.
Same as the right side, I measured the tube and centered it across the 2 torque tubes to be connected (flap torque tube and flap motor torque tube). And marked 4 holes evenly for the AN3 bolts. Then I drilled and deburred the holes and torqued it down with AN3 bolts.
While doing all of these, I used a gust lock to put the flap at 0 degrees position so the torque tubes are in their permanent location.
After drilling and torquing, I powered on the avionics and tried to move the flap up and down. Both left/right sides seem to be aligned and move smoothly.
Wing Harness
The other thing on the wing was connecting the harness and pneumatic lines from the pitot tube.
The wing connector is secured on the fuselage with 4 M4 screws, and the air lines just go through 2 grommet holes in the fuselage. Both are pretty easy to connect.
One caveat on the wing harness: the wire was pretty long. To prevent it from chafing on the metal or torque tubes, I used zip ties to bundle the wires and added some edge protector on the wing rib’s sharp edges.
