Assembly of the fuselage begins by attaching four nutplates onto the F-1204 center section. Care must be taken because the two nutplates near the middle of the center section are a different thread size than the two placed along the outer edges of the F-1204 center section. The center two nutplates are attached with flush pop rivets while the two nutplates on the outer edges of the center section are attached with solid rivets. Next the F-1204R retainer blocks were bolted onto the F-1204CL-R forward bulkhead side assembly and the F-1204 center section. A reminder to builders, when setting the torque value of the torque wrench make sure to add the resistance of the elastic stop nut or nutplate onto the desired torque setting to prevent under torquing the hardware. As an example, AN3 bolts are to be torqued between 20 and 25 inch pounds … if the stop nut offers 5 inch pounds of drag, then add 5 inch pounds to the torque wrench setting. So to get a true 25 inch pounds of torque, the wrench would need to be set to 30 inch pounds.
Using the pneumatic squeezer to rivet a nutplate
onto the F-1204 center section.
Using a torque wrench to tighten the F-1204R
retainer block bolts on the F-1204CL-R forward bulkhead side assembly.
Mounting the F-1204R retainer block on the
F-1204 center section with a torque wrench.
The F-1204P-L&R skin attach flanges are normally riveted onto the F-1204 center section with LP4-3 pop rivets. The clearance for the pneumatic was good, so the F-1204P skin attach flanges were riveted onto the F-1204 center channel with AN470AD4-4 solid rivets as opposed to LP4-3 pop rivets.
