Tuesday December 20, 2022
Aft Fuselage Bulkhead Repair (Aft Fuselage)
3.1 Hours

The replacement F-712 bulkhead halves arrived today, so I set about installing them. Here they are next to the old ones. I cut the flanges off of the old bulkhead and drilled out the rivets to separate them. Then I used the old F-712A as a template to drill the 1/4" bolt holes into the new bulkhead.

I then worked the new bulkhead into place in the fuselage to drill the flange on the F-712B that comes undrilled.

Then I deburred and dimpled the holes.

I prepped the edges and then primed them, plus some touch-up on the tailwheel mount weldment.

Then I riveted the two halves of the bulkhead together and riveted the weldment with the two keeper rivets.

I was worried about the next step...getting the entire bulkhead assembly into place in the fuselage without permanently bending anything. It's tricky because the fuselage is still narrowing aftwards here and there's a fixed space to insert the bulkhead through. I also needed the flanges to sit flush against the skin once it was seated.

In the end, I took it slowly and carefully and got it into place with a few gentle nudges from a hammer.

And the forward flange is still flush! Just need to rivet this thing in now and I will have repaired what was probably my biggest mistake on this project.

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