Maverick Loose Fairing Screws

Safety Note: The information in this article is not intended to be complete engineering information. You must consult with a properly licensed engineer before duplicating any of the modifications described within this atricle. This article descibes a change to my aeroplane that I found to resolve a problem with guidance and checking from an LAA engineer. 

The Maverick fairings are held on with small self tapping screws going into thin aluminium sheeting. 

If you over tighten these screws they will break the aluminium and make the thread larger meaning a jump to the next size of screw. You end up with different size screws going into different holes. So don't over tighten them. 

Some of the rear screws around the tail plane kept loosing and then making a rattling noise which is very off putting in flight. To fix this problem I placed some loctite medium strength thread locker on the problematic screws before tightening. This stopped the problem.

The Screws of the over wing fairings also came loose sometimes. Once I put some springy 1.5 mm draught excluder underneath this problem stopped. The springiness puts the screws in tension which stops them unwinding. Also very good against wind noise see another article. 

Rear fairings

 

Additional pictures

 

Front Fairing