Nose cone fastners

[Geoff Brown]

DZUS fasteners were the go to for most aircraft manufacturers up until about the early sixties when more efficient QR fasteners came into being.

The wire was as usual fixed with pop rivets which with usage loosened off & elongated the holes they were in. 

Replacement of the rivets usually entailed going oversize until a patch repair was required to revert back to the original rivet diameter.

With airframe vibration the fastener body if a loose lock used to enlarge the hole so not surprisingly when removing a panel they used to end up on the ground fully detached. Again another patch repair to revert the hole to standard size. Or one secretly refitted it for the next victim.......

The security of panels could become rather tenuous to say the least!! 

If a 'liney' one carried a DZUS tool which had two different sized ends to cope with most panel fasteners. One stored it on a piece of string around the neck.

[Mrp]

A certain person on here used to do the Ti grills and when he made them you used to get as a freebee with the grill, a Ti bottle opener with a end to undo the DZUS at the other end. Two very essential tools in one ! It also fitted on a key ring.

[SM25T]

Those bottle openers are great. They look too thin to be any use, but being Ti, of course work fine 

[Simon420R]

I've just drilled out the old fasteners and installed these. Thanks Roger for the link. This is going to save me scrabbling around on my back every time I need to check the dry sump tank level. I was a little nervous riveting into glass fibre but I used some washers to spread the load a bit. It seemed to work fine.

[Paul N]

Think I'll do the same looks a lot easier, did you use the original spring part, just replacing the parts in the pic?

[Simon420R]

Yes, I left the springs in place. The new fasteners in the link are an exact size match so you just drill out the old rivets and rivet in the new wing-nut version. I tested them this morning and it so much easier to remove the nose cone. I had the lower fasteners undone in seconds. It still took a little while to locate the new Dzus screws into the springs but at least I wasn't on my back doing it!

[Paul N]

Brilliant, thank you, will order

[Rex]

My SV came with fasteners on the top only. Never had a problem but one of the fasteners eventually wore out after 20 years. I now use a nylon bolt and wing nut on both sides.  Works great.

[Jonathan Kay]

Subsequent discussion of winged Dzus fasteners, including size and source.

Jonathan