September 4, 2016

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Today’s the day I’m going to put the cracked leading edge behind me. To do all this work, I pulled the wing out of the stand and placed it on sawhorses. thumb_IMG_2039_1024

Here’s the wing on sawhorses. It looks pretty sweet when it’s out of the fixture. 
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To fix the hole, I’m going to remove the damaged area and add a doubler. I used a unibit to cut a .500 diameter hole, which effectively removed the damaged region. IMG_2154

To form the doubler, I cut out a 2.5 X 2.5 square of .025 aluminum. In order to allow the aluminum to conform to the shape of the leading edge, I rolled the doubler over a piece of pipe I had laying around. I checked the curvature of the doubler against a scrap leading edge rib. 
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The doubler mounting holes were match drilled against the outside of the wing. I started with #40 holes and went up to #30 holes.
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Here’s the drilled wing:
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To dimple the skin, I used a close-quarters dimple die. This was the hardest part of the repair. First, the wing had to be moved back into the stand. I used needle-nose pliers to pass the dimple die through a lightening hole in the spar and out through the drilled holes in the skin.
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After the dimple die stem was protruding out of the wing, I used my blind rivet tool to form the dimples.
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I deburred, dimpled, and primed the doubler.
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The last thing I did was install the doubler. It took some patience to capture the doubler with a cleco, but everything ended up turning out great. The only thing left to do is to secure the doubler with blind rivets and full in the hole with some body filler. 
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On the left wing, I riveted the inboard aileron bracket in place. I incorporated the service bulletin parts, which strengthen the backside of the bracket.
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Here’s another image of the bracket.
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