In part two of this installment, we drill out the Avex blind rivets in the top wing skins. (Click here for the first post in this series on updating our Zodiac XL demonstrator per AMD's Safety Alert / Directive).

See the video clip at the bottom of this post for a good view of how we drilled out the blind rivets.

Removal of the wings and drilling out the skins as shown below can be started anytime, without needing to have the Upgrade Package parts on hand.

Starting along the main wing spar rivet line, we drill off the rivet head, without re-drilling (and enlarging) through the original rivet hole. The domed Avex blind rivets have a nice center-hole to center your drill bit, making the head quick and easy to drill off.

We use the same tools to drill out rivets than we used for assembly: A good hand drill and a lot of clecos.

Once the head of the rivet is removed, we use a 1/8-inch (#30) punch to push (punch) the back end of the rivet through the hole releasing is from the skin. Check out the video clip below to see how this is done.

After drilling out all the rivets along the main wing spar, we drilled out the rivets of the top nose ribs:

Next, we drilled out all the rivets of the rear top skin (along the rear ribs and rear spar) and removed the top rear skin.

Here's a clip showing us drilling the rivets to remove the top skins:

Next, we'll start drilling out some of the conventional wing spar rivets.

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