What Cheered You Up Today? (1 Viewer)

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Yeah, the cheap stuff fails pretty easy. I bought Thomas and Betts from a couple of different sources, including some from a guy that was liquidating a load of stuff from a contractor buyout. It was weird seeing the uninsulated terminals being listed at way higher prices than the insulated, even on Mouser and Digikey. Got 400 terminals, in 3 sizes for about 60$. Mouser was something like 70 cents each in bulk. Picked up 100 foot rolls of white heat shrink for less than 16$ each from one of the suppliers I use. That blows away buying in 4 foot sticks for 3-4$ each.
 
Got the caravan all sorted, after the flood in winter - or more correctly, I got knackered just sitting watching Karl do all the work !
It's now thoroughly cleaned, inside and out, and the electrics and all other systems work fine, with no apparent damage. Just need to have the new transformer / power unit fitted, in order to be able to use the water pump and auxilliary lighting, and it'll be as good as new.
My sincere thanks to Karl for all his hard work, and I'll be staying for a short break, before returning home on the weekend, a very happy chappy, and then coming back to Norfolk in a week or two.
 
anytime mate !

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Wow! that's great!
 
I had my first encounter with installing flush rivets today.

An A&P advised me that I should plan on using flush rivets, smooth side down, for the Ercoupe seat pan reinforcement; that way, the rivets would not rub against the spar cap, which the seat pan sits atop. Flush rivets have to be dimpled to sit flush so I borrowed a dimpling die set from a friend of mine. After consulting some reference works I decided to use AN426-4-4 rivets and selected a suitable dimpling die set. I drilled the holes in the aluminum and used the dimpling die. Looked good. Then I started installing the rivets. The first one looked okay but the others mostly not so great. A couple of rivets just refused to stay in the hole after being squeezed. Then I decided to use the next size rivet AN426-5-4 to see if it would work in those too-loose holes. To my astonishment it came out perfect. Then I tried another -5-4 rivet in another loose rivet hole and it looked great too. Finally, I put a -5-4 in a hole that had never had any rivet installed and it worked fine. At that point I realized that I had selected a -5 dimpling die rather than a -4. None of the dimpling dies had legible markings and I was too inexperienced to realize it was too large for a -4 rivet.

I'll have to drill out the remaining -4 rivets and replace them with -5, a pain to do - but at least now I know how to fix the problem.

So, while it was not a total success, I'm happy that I know what must be done now and that it will work,
 
MIflyer said:
At that point I realized that I had selected a -5 dimpling die rather than a -4. None of the dimpling dies had legible markings and I was too inexperienced to realize it was too large for a -4 rivet.
Click to expand...
Just wait til you run into countersinks with replaceable pilots

Hope you get the 'coupe back in the air soon. What model do you have?
 
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