Leading edges went onto the wing–still everything up to now clecoed together with very few rivets placed. The ribs were not hard to get into the skin, so either Van’s made some adjustments to the tooling or all the straightening and deburring really paid off because I heard these can be a real pain.
They really add some height to the wing!
So far I’m not regretting prepping or priming these parts at the same time as the main ribs… things are moving much more quickly with them done.
I battled the stall warning sensor for a while. Not only were the instructions around this part hit-or-miss, I just really couldn’t decide if I needed it on the plane. It’s there. For now. I make take the route that many have and yank it out around painting time.
Ryan I saw in your post / video on leading edges that you thought Vans was allowing blind rivets to attach the leading-edge ribs to the spar. Could you give me more info on that? I talked to one guy at Vans and he said that he didn’t know anything about it. All that means is that I was talking to the wrong person.
I’m getting ready to install the edges on my RV-8 so blind rivets would be a lot easier seeing how I’m working alone. Thanks Mitch
I first encountered this here:
https://www.rvplane.com/?categoryid=3&dayid=264
Since reading this post, I’ve also seen a few builders report similar discussions with Van’s. These rivets were among the most frustrating in my build, though I think I could do better now…