Sonex note on new rivets

[fastj22]

I had around 8 of those on the CCC-42 rivets on the leading edges. Kerry suggested I use a punch and hammer to pound them back flush (worked on all but 2 or 3), then just Dremel the rest. Worked for me...

I would not use a punch, but an autobody hammer/dolly to "tap" them flush. But what would piss me off would be if the mandrel leaves the rivet, its gonna be loose in the wing just irritating me that its there.

[N1906R]

I had five or six rivets like that on my leading edge skins. On the worst ones I used the dremmel to grind it most of the way down to the rivets and then used a very small punch to pop it back into the rivet. Not a big deal but annoying and scary to have to do.

Jim

[sonex892]

I had some, maybe 10 of the ccc 42's in the leading edge snap off proud of the rivet. I just punched them back in. A few mandrels did drop into the wing but it wasnt a drama as those all rolled out down the leading edge when the wing was tipped.

[rizzz]

Thought I would post a photo I shot this weekend - a closeup of one of the offending rivets.

Well, I'm finally riveting the forward skin on my right wing. Done one side so far, and yes, for about half of the rivets the mandrel broke too high and look like ones in the pictures you posted.
I did everything as recommended, drilled up to #32 then dimpled with the SSD, set the pressure on the compressor to the lowest possible setting so it would still pull the rivet (an a few pulls). No luck.

It's not very difficult to fix though, so far I've been able to tap the mandrel back in on all of them using a light hammer and a small flat-tipped punch.

On my other wing I will try to up-drill only to #36, dimple and then ream if required, to get an even tighter fit, another builder told me he had more success that way.

[daleandee]

I also tapped them back in mostly using the spring loaded center punch. The problem was that when I turned the wing over the loose ones wanted to fall back down and the short jagged stem edges would hang from the bottom of the wing.

To remedy that, and because I knew I was going to paint the airplane, I used some very light filler from Aircraft Spruce with the micro balloons to fill the holes. I've heard of others using a dab of epoxy in the hole for this. Like most, I tried every trick mentioned but nothing eliminated the problem completely.

But she's flying now and that aggravation is long since behind me ...

8~)

Dale
N319WF

[Sonex1517]

It seemed when I did my experimentation, the results did vary by the rivet's mandrel - I kept my notes and photos from that day. Now that I am on the fuselage, I had a couple of rivets break proud on the sides also. They were not flush rivets, either.


Robbie
Sonex 1517

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

[Bryan Cotton]

I have had one break proud out of 90. The proud one was a flush rivet in a piece of scrap. Have they changed again? Mine don't rattle either.