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Old 06-26-2012 | 08:27 PM
  #1895  
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min$2crash
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From: Idaho, MI
Default RE: Pheonix Extra 330S 60-90 Size

Hey Wrangler 1, just reading your post now, sorry about the delayed response. If you can find a metric nylon bolt to match the thread in the wing's blind nut, which is an M6 x 1.25mm pitch when I measure mine, Standard coarse pitch is (M6 x 1.0). But I checked it twice with my caliper, 8 threads in 10mm = 1.25mm pitch,in other words- coarser than coarse.
If you can find a nylon bolt and matching nuts, you could thread and tighten/glue one or two nuts all the way to the head of the screw and leave it there for easy gripping when you put the plane together. That nut is tightened against the bolt head, and will stay there forever, esp if you use a little glue on it.

PS mine came with a couple of extra wing bolts, check your box/hardware bag....

PPS, I found that the bolts tended to work loose easily after the first 20 flights. I drilled a hole in the finger tab off to one side and lock wire the bolts to the airframe after wing mounting it to keep them from coming loose. That way I do not have to overtighten the bolts to keep them from unscrewing in flight. I used to lockwire the front bolt to the rear bolt on each side, but that was too tedious. Now I just lockwire the rear bolts to the crossbar and if the front bolts come loose, I just shake them out of the fuselage later. One rear bolt is sufficient, if not perfect, as the rear bolts are further from the tube and have better mechanical advantage.
Now, if that one bolt came loose, you'd need a new plane...[]

PPPS last resort: knock out the nuts in the wing and replace with a T-nut of a thread size that you CAN find a nylon bolt for! You will need to make an access hole in the root rib for access to the T-nut which is lightly glued in. I knocked one T-nut loose by mistake, storing the wing bolts in the nut and bumped the bolt, so then I had to make a hole for epoxying the factory (brown plastic/nylon) T-nut back in place.
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_47...74/key_/tm.htm Post #1835 shows a picture of the 5/8" hole that I drilled, no problems in >30 flights since then. That was barely big enough to remount the T-nut, you can go bigger if you have fat fingers! The root rib is pretty thick, ~5mm so a hole there is not a big deal.