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MIKE
HOWE'S RV7 CONSTRUCTION
Body & Fender
Work
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January 30, 2002
No matter how
careful I was in bending the Elevator where the trim tab is I did
it again. In an effort to bend it I proved that you can redo
something and screw it up a second time. It was late and I just
quit and went to bed. I ordered the third elevator stuff the next
morning, and am waiting on it to arrive. I got to think about
things I had learned many years ago and how they might apply to RV
building and one of them is back to my body and fender days when I
took a community collage class in auto body repair. I decided to
try to repair it for practice, (I will redo the third left
elevator and am not really upset as this is a learning process and
I try to keep that in mind)) but I
think during the construction many things can be repaired or made
to look better using some standard auto body repairs like they do
to fix your fender. I am going to try to recount what I learned
that it might give you some idea
of what the process is of filling, priming and so on. I think
there are many areas on the RV that can be made to look
cosmetically better by a little body work. I can see
learning some basics in a lot of subjects is going to be handy and
would like to see more on things like electrical basic, fiberglass
basic, which Jim did a great job on, click
here to check it out Maybe some of the techniques on
this page might help someone repair something someday.
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After trying unsuccessfully
to bend the tab again I ended up breaking it off at a point to far
from the edge to put in a rib without adding some of the skin that
was lost I started by bending
small rib to give the skin something to attach too.
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| I used the old trim
tab to check for distance between tab and elevator and moved new
rib to get about a 3/16th" gap |
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Drilled and clecoed
the rib at the new location |
| Another shot of the
new rib drilled and clecoed in place |
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New small rib with
hole drilled for fit through the skin, the blue outline is where
the new skin strip will be. |
| Bought a heavy duty
Xacto paper cutter at Office Max, works quite well in cutting aluminum
skin and stiffener material, a poor mans metal shear. |
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New skin clecoed
in place |
| New skin riveted to
the new small rib. The no holes yoke works great for tight places,
was able to get most of the rivets except the last one which
I pop riveted |
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Pop Riveted a few hard
to get rivets. |
| I cleaned and scuffed
up the bare metal and applied some filler. I am using Metal, which
says it is from aluminum repair. You catalyze it and spread it on.
I suppose any type auto body filler would work equally as well if
you don't try to spread it to thick |
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Spread the catalyzed
filler over the area you are repairing |
| I had my
old DA sander which I dug out to sand it down, You don't need a
lot of tools if you don't have a DA, hand sanding with s small
rubber block backing works well. |
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You need to prepare
the surface for priming. I watched "From the ground Up"
on the discovery channel and they do a great segment on painting
your own plane, make sure to watch it and I think the whole series
is now available on video. They point out there are two ways to
prepare bare metal chemical prep or by sanding. I am using both in
different applications, for this I used the DA to scuff the
aluminum and then cleaned it well. Again I like a two part bare
metal primer, This is not the one that you can sand, it will go on
next. I like the little roll of narrow paper the is already taped,
just pull it off and tape the edge and the paper folds out for a
foot or so. |
| Here it is after the
first coat of two part bare metal primer |
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