Well, thanks for the help guys. This week I installed some Helicoils in the two front blind nuts on my Eraser. Looks like it will work just fine. It was really hard trying to line everything up since the saddle surface is not perpendicular to the centerline of the threads. Also, what compounded the problem was that the nuts were so worn that a screw just flopped around in the hole. It isn't exactly perfect, but everything goes together without having to force it.
It sure seems that the blind nut material is very soft aluminum. Even using a cutting oil the tapping process was very scary. The tap wanted to stick and I never turned more than 1/2 turn before reversing the direction to break the chips. Now that I have stainless steel threads there I don't expect any further problems. Why would anybody want to save a few .01's of a gram on something so critical? Anytime I have something that I expect to have many assembly cycles on it I would not want to use soft aluminum if I had an option. Anyway it's fixed now and for much less than a new fuselage. Mark W. RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please note that subscribe and unsubscribe messages must be sent in text only format with MIME turned off. Email sent from web based email such as Hotmail and AOL are generally NOT in text format
