Message
Has anyone had this problem and is there a better
way to find the centerline than splitting the difference at the hinge
points?
Yes Dale!
The
factory is absolutely correct. I made this mistake and have a disgusting
fix to recenter my hinges. Your thought to adjust the hingeline toward the
skin which remains to be attached is excellent. My error was close to
1/8". The question is how much do you compensate? I would imagine
that if you placed nickels (with superglue) all over the cap strips you
would get very close to the final centerline. The nickels will
approximate your hysol flox build up. If you're a low flox
high weight kind of guy perhaps a dime would be adequate.
During
the actual installation with hysol, there of course is some variability based on
the number of shot bags or weight that you put on top of the skin. This is
pretty arbitrary however since you cannot reverse your direction of adjustment
(take off weight and hope the skin will rise). Additionally, the final
edge trim will most likely not have been done so where you measure to is
somewhat arbitrary.
In any
event, if you find the hingeline slightly off be careful with your
correction. I slotted my hinge holes to allow the offset. This of
course would allow the hinges to move over time as the glass slowly
compresses. To compensate for the eventual movement, I slopped a little
wedge of flox at the bottom of each hinge so it could not move. At
high speed on one particular day, the flox popped off giving a nice little pitch
jerk in my flight controls. Moral of the story, if you do any sort of
hinge slotting repack the holes with flox upon assembly. Of course the
better fix would've been to buy undrilled hinges and offset the
holes.
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