Wing Installation and Wing Root Gap Seal Questions

[kmacht]

I used a little bit of 3m weatherstrip sealant in a few places on mine. A few hours into flight testing the seal worked it's way loose under the wing and made a heck of a racket flopping around and hitting the lower fuselage while on downwind. After securing it in place with a few dabs of the 3m stuff it never came loose again.

Keith
#554

[Bryan Cotton]

Here is a followup on my taped wings idea. I used regular 1/2" orange electrical tape from the Lowes Depot aviation aisle. So far I've got 43.6 hours on this tape and it is holding up well. I'm not suffering too many drafts in the cockpit like others have reported, and I've been flying with ground temps as low as 10F. Some of that may be the tape, and some may be that my seat cushions are jammed against the sides. So, I'm giving electrical tape on the wing roots a ringing endorsement. It works as well as it did for gliders. I think I did the bottom first, then came over the top and overlapped a little bit. Two pieces per wing.

[tps8903]

Just finished test fitting my wings--used WD-40 but it was a nightmare and a half getting the wings in and not so bad removing them--what do you guys recommend to make it easier? In the absence of a better suggestion, I'm thinking a liberal dose of anti-seize lube on all contact surfaces instead of WD-40 which will also make it easier to remove the wings than WD-40 which will lose its effectiveness over time.

For those of you who have used the Vans wing root gap seal, I have the following questions:
1. What was the gap you used between the wing skin and the fuselage?
2. I noticed that the seal flap under the wing skin separates from the wing skin when you raise the sealing flap into a nice radius--did you use any sealant to hold the gap seal to the underside of the wing skin? If so, what did you use?

Any lessons learned, things you would do differently, tips of things I should do or not do?
Thanks in advance for your input.

I riveted a small block of nylon in the Spar tunnel that sticks up just enough for a sliding surface. I installed the wings, carefully measured the gap at each rivet. Cut the aluminum gap seal within 1mm and installed a very basic u channel rubber mold with 1/16" two sided tape. Looks great.

[avee8r]

Instead of going to the trouble of leaving an 1/8 in gap (or whatever the dimension) at the wing root for Van’s rubber channel, I paid the same (ok, maybe a little more) attention to fit the wing root trim piece to about a 32nd and left it without any rubber channel at all. Seems to work well so I sold the rubber channel.
Enjoy the build and Happy Landings
John
N50NX