Rear Tail Doesn't Match Plans

Working on an older RV4 that my buddy inherited from his dad. It was 1st flown back in 1986, just over a year ago we took it apart to bring it up from florida. While working to install the horizontal last weekend, we noticed it in no way matched the plans I have.

Bulkhead F-410 is a single piece that went from top to bottom, where as the plans show 410A and B with A being forward of B about 2" to allow the attach bolt thru longeron to go in front of the horizontal forward spar, where as this was built with just 2 bolts on backside of the spare, and 2 bolts going thru the upper part of the bulkhead horizontally.

Anybody else seen this, Vans can't find an older version of plans showing it done this way.

Mine first flew in 91 (I wasn't the builder) and it is setup just like yours. I called vans to ask them about safety of it and stuff and they said all is good. They changed plans a little after the -6 was released they said. Only real reason he thought was consistency of the build between the two since the -6 is built similar to the new drawings (still).

My ‘87 has the single bulkhead.
One of the revision numbers on the plans addresses this. Each plans page revision table is in the lower right corner.

matching plans

You know, as i have built my airplane, my tail no longer matches when I started. It seems too many hours in the shop and not enough on the bike has made my tail a little bigger, and no longer matches my plan.

andoman said:

My ‘87 has the single bulkhead.
One of the revision numbers on the plans addresses this. Each plans page revision table is in the lower right corner.

Click to expand...

I didn't even look at revision table, my bad being an engineer I should have thought of that. Odd even vans support didn't think it changed, and thought the tail was bought in the late 90's even though it was airworthy in 1986.

Do you actually need to see the plans or are you just curious. I could dig out my plans which are 1990 ish to see if it has the revision you need.

This may help

https://vansairforce.net/community/showthread.php?t=156798


Our friend Lars had this issue. Check out this thread.

CATPart said:

Do you actually need to see the plans or are you just curious. I could dig out my plans which are 1990 ish to see if it has the revision you need.

Click to expand...

Found a drawing below so we are good now.

arffguy said:

https://vansairforce.net/community/showthread.php?t=156798


Our friend Lars had this issue. Check out this thread.

Click to expand...

That helped a lot. We were just scratching our head with our group having built several RV's and worked on many more.

Long story short this plane was taken apart last year and moved, the original tail has seen better days. We happened to have an RV8 tail laying around, so some changes are being made to accept the RV8 tail with thicker skins, vs trying to repair and worry about the current RV4 tail.