Swing the Wing Forward - Just a Wee Bit

[Cherrybark]

Here's the situation. Plane is fully assembled with only a couple of tasks remaining before weight & balance and inspection. Today's job was trimming and mounting the turtle deck. Step 1. Put the turtle deck in place and mark where it needs to be trimmed to mate against the fuselage carry through tube. Sounded easy enough - then I discovered a problem. My wingtip wires and pitot tubes run through the aft wing spar. When they enter the fuselage, they run aft of the bolt that holds the rear spar in place. They are very tidy, but now I see they are in the way of fitting the turtle deck. If I had chosen to run them in front of that rear spar bolt there wouldn't be a problem. All of the wires have "service" connectors so they can be disconnected and individually pulled into the spar and run forward of the bolt. But the connectors are waterproof and a little too bulky to push into the spar and pull back out in front of the bolt. The wires ends are crimped to pins that snap into the plug body and it would be a miracle if I didn't bugger up one or more pins disassembling them.

An easier solution would be to pull the aft spar bolt and swing the wing forward just enough to give maybe an inch of clearance between the rear spar and fuselage. That would give me room to rerun the wiring and tubing with the connection ends in place. Any comments on swing the wing forward a bit other than to just give it a very careful try?

[PapuaPilot]

What you are suggesting might work, but I would be very careful. I'm sure you realize the wing is able to be swung normally because it is supported by the rear spar and the lift strut attachment directly below. If you remove the rear spar bolt there could be a serious twisting moment between the two remaining attachment points. If I was going to do it I would level the fuselage so the wing is level and support the wing at the outboard end. It would be prudent to have one or two people to help do this.

[efwd]

Hey Carl, I just looked at some pics after a recollection I had about the time I needed to adjust one of my strut rod end bearings. I do believe your limited on the forward swing by the fuselage attach point for the strut. It is cut out on the trailing edge to accommodate the fish mouth to rotate aft. The hole on mine appears to be a tad off center favoring the aft of the mount. I bet the clearance at the front spar would probably allow the degree swing you need but I seriously question the lower end of the strut allowing what you need. Crossing fingers that I am wrong.

[Cherrybark]

I had this clever idea this evening and haven't been to the plane to look things over. The lift strut attachment being located directly below the aft spar swing point it obviously a big, big clue. I'll drop this idea and go back to fiddling with the connectors on the wire ends. This close to completion I really don't need a major screw up.

Thanks for the quick feedback.

[efwd]

hahaha. Or that. ;)

[jiott]

Carl, I brought my wing wires out of the rear spar aft of the bolt and had no trouble with interference with the turtle deck. I relieved the turtle deck a little as you can see from the photo.2629426295

[jrevens]

Think of the rear spar attach point and the lift strut fuselage attach point as a big hinge assembly ... 2 big hinge "knuckles" in axial alignment with each other. Hinges don't work very well when they aren't in alignment - especially somewhere around 3 ft. out of alignment. If absolutely necessary, I'd carefully support the wing at 2 places, detach it at the bottom of the strut and the rear spar and carefully move it a tiny bit. Maybe some would consider that overkill, but I've already got a couple of small step ladders with support extensions added that allowed me to mount my wings by myself.

[Eric Page]

If the wing swing doesn't work, or you decide not to try it...


Deutsch terminal removal tools:

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-or-
https://www.amazon.com/Thexton-THE483-Terminal-Release-Tool/dp/B000UA612Q/


How to use the tool:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8WPQUVhuHk

[Shadowrider]

We ran into this problem on one of ours and then learned our lesson. Why not just remove the wing? We had three of us. Remove the lift strut while one supports the wing tip. The other supports inboard section. We slide the wing out and moved the wires and slid the wing back in. Took about 15 min a wing.

[Cherrybark]

Ended up removing the plugs and rerunning the wires. I had a couple of pin insertion/extractor tools from the Garmin wiring phase and they worked nicely. The job took an hour or two. I considered asking a couple of the airport residents over to help remove the wings but "company" seems to turn into several hours as others notice the activity and drop by. My wife liked Jim's suggestion of just trimming away a bit more of the turtle deck but I couldn't stand knowing the wires weren't run "correctly"