Stall Warner

[Joe Parish]

Wondering if anyone with a newer 9 wing kit with the holes for the stall Warner left it out and just dimpled and filled the holes with rivets. My concern is with the two holes right at the leading edge curve. When installing the vane you need to remove the material between the two holes. I would like to dimple them, I am afraid they would not turn out very good being on the curve of the leading edge. I could just put it in but I am putting in a AOA in the right wing. Anyone dimple those holes and if so what did you use to do it? Thanks for any suggestions.

[BSwayze]

Joe,

I'm not building a 9, and I don't know much about the newer wing kits, but whenever you want a really good looking flush rivet without worrying about dimpling, I would recommend using NAS 1097 "oops" rivets. Especially since you're not worried about structural strength... you're just filling a hole.

You probably already have some on hand, if you're like most builders. All they need is a very shallow countersink in the skin, usually accomplished with a few turns of a sharp deburring bit. My 1-hole deburring bit works best for this. I used them extensively, especially building my fuselage, for holding nutplates. Again, structural strength isn't an issue when holding a nutplate in place, and the heads are smaller, perfectly flush, and you don't have to dimple the nutplates either. Here's a picture for you:

The plate on the left uses typical dimpled rivets to hold the nutplates. The one on the right uses oops rivets. Not the best closeup, but if you look close, can you see how much smaller the rivets are on the right? They're much flusher, too. They practically disappear.



Hope this helps you. Good luck with your project.

[cbkillion]

On mine, I left the stall warner out filled the holes with pop rivets after countersinking a bit. I did make little backing plates to go behind each one just to give the rivet a bit more to grab onto. Probably not necessary but it seemed like a good a idea at the time. Also, I tapped the heads of the rivets with my rubber mallet to make them fit the curve of the skin better. They look nice.

[Joe Parish]

Thanks for the info guys, just what I needed.

Bruce after I posted this I realized that it is not specific to a 9, just the newer kits once Van's included the stall warner on all kits. Thanks again I appreciate the info guys.