Christine,
My suggestion for what it is worth, and I have not tried the idea out, is to
take a piece of solid steel, long enough so that when one end is heated up
you can hold the other end in a gloved hand e.g. circa 1 inch diam and 18
inches would probably do, possibly less.
Drill a short hole in one end so that it is a tight fit over your broken
wing pin, with the pin touching the base of the hole for good heat
conduction but not too close to the wing material.
Heat the steel rod up with a propane burner as hot as you can get it but
nowhere near red hot!
Place rod over pin and conduct heat into pin. Be patient and hopefully the
heat will be conducted into the pin, soften the locktite. It will probably
take a few minutes. Success will depend on how well the pin material
conducts. I guess you could try an experiment with one of your new pins
away from the plane.
Check regularly tightness with some form of wrench or stud extractor until
stud turns.
The objective is to use conduction to get the heat to exactly where you need
it, with no flames or hot air gun anywhere near the wing structure.
I used a similar technique to remove the old reduxed on tail wheel casting
after I had completed the tail wheel mod.
Donald Kesterton
Builder 216
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From: Christine Timm [SMTP:cptimm@intergate.bc.ca]
Subject: Changing wing pins
Help! I have a very unhappy husband. He was trying to replace the
wing pins
to use the new ones, intended for the glider wing configuration,
when
disaster struck.
He was advised to heat the pin, turn and that it should then release
and
come out. It did turn once but...
A combination of, we think, insufficient heat from a small torch,
and
me interrupting at just the wrong moment to say dinner was
ready!....
the torch blew out and the net result was that the pin cooled and
broke
after it had initially released.
I am in deep ..... and would like to see if I could find some
solution.
Tonight he went to the RAA meeting with hope that a solution to
release the
locktite (sp?) would be found. We plan to try again by protecting
the wing
from heat with a shield of the firewall material and using a
stronger heat
source. Reassurance would help. Does anyone out there have any
other
suggestions? There is a stub about 1/2" remaining.
On a lighter note, I've really enjoyed reading about everyone's
progress and
feel the world is so much smaller when we hear trips to Holland and
other
Europa activities.
Looking forward to being of assistance one day when we can help
solve
someone else's problems!
Chris and Peter Timm
Builder #110 (UK) - Canada
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