Lot's of people report having trouble with these. The problem is that the threaded end is hollow, but takes two -12 rivets at 90* to each other to hold it on. The rivets are so long that they can bow in the middle in the hollow space + you're trying to set them in a round pipe, so all those things combine to make it pretty easy to get the tail clenched.

The ones I got with my used wings were dimensionally correct and structurally "okay" but the tails looked ...not great. So when I ordered the fuselage kit I had them throw in the stuff to make a new set, thinking that I'd have a go at making a set that were a little prettier than the ones I already have. My theory is that if I could keep the rivets from bowing in the middle, I would have an easier time of setting these with a hand squeezer and minimize the potential to clench the tails.

First order of business was to make all the pieces fit. The way these come, theres powder coat residue inside the pipe, plus according to my micrometer, the fittings are about .010 bigger than the ID of the pipe.

I cleaned out the pipe with a piece of sandpaper in a simple mandrel in a cordless drill, and took a few thousandths off the ends by chucking them up in my drill press and hitting them with sandpaper, followed up with a good polish with a scotchbrite pad.

Once I was confident that I could get everything together without resorting a hammer, I filled the cavity in the ends of the threaded fittings with 5 minute epoxy. I then premiered all the raw areas and assembled wet, then match drilled.

Van's calls out a -12 rivet here, but it's way to long. I think that they are hedging their bets against the rivets bending in the middle, but since I've filled up the hollow space with epoxy, that shouldn't be an issue, so I went with -11 rivets, and all but one of them turned out beautiful. On the one, the shop head is a little crooked, but not bad enough that I'm going to try to replace it.

Overall, I'm much happier with the result vs. what I inherited with the wings.