Riveting Landing Light Housing - 1.2 hours

Today I worked on finishing the landing light housing install per section 51¹ of the manual. I started by removing the clamps and ensuring that the bottom edge of the housing was well bonded to the leading edge skin. After that, I tried to countersink and pull the rivets along the top edge of the housing. I started with the middle rivet and worked outward, as instructed. I had done this using the pneumatic puller on the other wing; however, the first rivet I tried to pull (the center one) did not pull correctly. In fact, it failed in a new way (for me). Instead of the rivet stem breaking off, the entire stem, including the ball on the end, was pulled through the middle of the rivet/the hole and into the rivet puller.

I ended up pulling the rest of the rivets successfully using the hand puller instead but thought this failure mode was odd. After I had pulled all of the others, I was able to drill out and remove the bad rivet from the center hole. Unfortunately, when the rivet stem pulled incorrectly, it enlarged the carbon fiber hole on the back side. I didn’t want to risk its strength so I decided to make or use an aluminum backup washer on the back side to give the rivet something to grip against. For now, I’m leaving a cleco in that hole but the landing light housing is otherwise complete.