Riveting the Firewall   October 16th, 2010

Riveting the firewall is pretty easy, with a couple of exeptions.  Here is the firewall ready to get riveted.  Note that the firewall recess can be installed later to make accessing the cabin easier during assembly.  Also, I have not decided if I am using a fuel injected or carburated engine, so I have not drilled the fuel pump doubler plate yet (I understand this is not needed with a fuel injected engine).

Most of the rivets can be back-riveted.  The flanges on the firewall point ‘down’,  so I had to use a few pieces of plywood/MDF to make sure the flanges cleared the table.

The rivets on these lower angles are too close to the angle to use a ‘normal’ back-riveting tool.  I tried a couple of approaches, including a pneumatic squeezer and the arbor from my c-frame dimpler.  It turns out the easiest way to rivet these is to take out the plastic piece off the back riveting set, and just hit the rivet directly.  You have to go a few hits at a time to make sure the narrow set does not bounce off the rivet and ding the angle, but it is definitely doable.

Here is the end result.  Note I scratched the paint on the angle, but there are no deep scratches. If I were to do this again, I would just make sure to use some masking tape on the angle to keep the set from rubbing against the aluminum when setting the rivets.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 16th, 2010 at 9:22 pm and is filed under Firewall. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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