Challenge with shipping on cap strips

[N3UW]

Well about 2 weeks ago I ordered my cap strips for the spars on my Patrol. I ordered them from Spruce and they were shipped out of CA to my house in Colorado. They were supposed to arrive last Monday by UPS freight. Monday afternoon I got a call from Spruce customer service. She said a nice young man called her and said that ups had delivered my package to them. it was delivered 3 towns away. spruce has contacted ups to correct it and she told me they were supposed to pick it up that evening and redeliver it. I would have picked it up myself but I was heading out of town. ups picked it up but at first thought they had not. Then once they picked it up they could not figure out what they had done with it. I have been working with the depot manager since Tuesday. I have been calling every day. they have still not found it. How do you loose a 13' tube?? Ugggggggg!! I hope I can at least get the shipping refunded. Anyone know if there is any guarantee on ups freight delivery times??

[DesertBearhawk]

Same thing happened to me, they shipped to my old address even though I changed it on my online profile, I had to drive 80 miles to my old house and get it…no refunds, no nothin...

[X'N]

That stinks. Were you able to get them to cut the rear cap strips?

I doubt they you will get anything other than a sorry. UPS never wants to admit they did anything wrong. We had a Starter/gen shipped AOG with them once and they were able to destroy a newly overhauled unit by busting a double box with 10" of foam formed around it. My boss said it took 4 months for them to pay only after the threat of being sued. That said I also worked for ups for a very short time loading boxes. If I learned anything Never put fragile on anything, just take the time to pack it right.

[Mark Moyle]

ACS will reship that order order again. I've had a few orders not arrive and with boxes ripped open and parts missing. ACS reshipped those parts and pieces no charge. I did have a large sheet metal order that was shipped incorrectly ( shipped flat in a crate 4' x 12') damaged and delivered. I complained for a few months to the ACS customer service folks to no avail. When I posted my woes on the yahoo group.... I got results. The sheet metal was rolled and shipped per my original request at no charge. In the past couple months I've spent a bundle on parts and pieces at ACS. Ordered a new univair nose bowl.... ACS told me the parts was to big to ship via US Mail. The customer service gal couldn't be motivated into shipping the item as I requested even after I gave her the maximum box dimensions for US Mail. Canceled the order for that part and ordered the nose bowl from Univair. It showed up in the mail three days later. Mark M. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

[Craig C.]

What's worse is when your own inhouse transportation group loses a 1 of a kind test part....Crate was 5 foot wide by 4 foot high and 11 feet long with a 500+ pound weight. It was one of 5 crates on the trailer when it left recieving and never reached our building. The other four were all correctly delivered to two other buildings. Transportation group started to sweat bullets when we told them it would cost over 1mil to replicate the part and we would charge it to their department. We finally found it a month later stacked with some crates slated to be destroyed over in a storage hangar.

[Barry]

John,

I am going through some issues with ACS as well. I placed an order for all the rest of the Aluminum for the wings. I have major shipping damage on almost every piece. I called them and they said they will ship at no cost the replacement sheets. My cap strips did make it okay, however. Good luck!

[geraldmorrissey]

I sent back a lot of scratched up cap strip extrusions to Spruce only to have it replaced with new scratched up cap strip stock. After many back and forth I finally got one shipset of non scratched up cap strip extrusions. Through it all Spruce stepped up and replaced as necessary. But it was a royal PITA. Somehow they just did not understand the whole scratch thing. They just went into the pile grabbed the next bunch and shipped it out.
Gerry
Patrol #30 Wings

[N3UW]

Well....Hard to believe but UPS said they found the 13' package. They are planning on delivering it tomorrow. I got lucky and got a VERY helpful lady at ACS. Extension 511 if anyone needs it. She was really pissed at UPS. Told me to make sure there was no damage and even reconfirmed with them that they were going to deliver tomorrow. She is attempting to get a credit for the full shipping or at least part of it. She did say that if anything is damaged or missing let her know and they would take care of it. She was the one that got the call from the young man that received the shipment in error. She was also miffed that UPS she had to tell UPS about the problem and ACS was never notified. We will see if UPS does anything. It is not clear what the contracted delivery guarantee is. Looks like they think within the year and same state is enough.

I also got my Spars from the shop that sheared and bent them for me to my specifications. They look great and fit the spars great. They were able to maintain .01 or better tolerances. I am ready to start building those spars now. At least this week that is. My wife's spring break from school is next week. We will be heading off on a cruise Saturday and then I will be traveling some of the following week. I hope to go visit DesertBearhawk (Dave) again in Vegas the end of March. (Dave....I think I will be in vegas the 25 if you are in guys are free. Dinner on me this time!)

[N3UW]

The saga continues. I will say spruce has been as helpful as they can. Yesterday UPS freight set up an appointment to deliver between 12:00 and 4:00 PM to deliver two packages they said they found. One was the cap strips the other was a smaller box with rivets and a rivet fan. At 5:00 the truck showed up and had one box. At least it was the cap strips. The driver said he does not know why shippers ever try t and small boxes wit freight. They often get lost. they are supposed to be a shipping company and Freight is often unusual sized material. oh well. I talked to spruce and they were going to ship out the lost stuff today. This morning at 8:00 am I got a call from another nice CS agent at spruce. She said she got a call from a gentleman in the shipping department at st Joseph's hospital in denver that they had received a small box addressed to me with rivets inside. She sits just beside the other agent I was working with Terri. I told here the story and she added n Terri. We all had a laugh at the incompetence of ups freight. They ended up talking to the guy who had received the box in error and he agreed to ship it to me via FedEx ( not ups) using spruce account number. Terri is working with ups freight to attempt to get a full refund for shipping. She seems to be a bulldog on this one. If it is possible to be done I think she will be able to do it. She had been updating me often on the progress. luckily the cap strips where undamaged and spruce had packaged them well and they were is good condition and Unscratched unlike some other peoples shipments. In the past I have had some problems with spruce but I will say that this time they have been great. Now it is time to start building the spar. More building updates and photos to follow in a few weeks when I get back from vacation. I am doing a cruise with the wife so let's hope the ship stays floating with power and there is no massive sickness outbreak.

[geraldmorrissey]

I built a drill guide to drill all the cap strip holes. I suggest you build one. I built two. One for #30 and #21. The drill bushings are relatively cheap, $10.00/ea. This will insure you don't get the egg shaped holes. It takes longer to drill with a guide but the results are worth it. Make sure to put some chip clearance in the tool. An 3/16" or so should do it. I wouldn't consider drilling a hole in the spar without one unless you have a real steady hand and can accurately drill normal to the surface. Most people cannot. Boeing used to say it takes the average installer a year to drill an accurate free hand hole normal to contour. And that's drilling holes all day long. I believe it. Take some time now to build a couple of simple tools before you begin, it will be worth it.
Cheers
Gerry
Patrol #30 Wings

[Phil]

Wow. After reading all this I'm glad I got my aluminum through the local Steel supply warehouse. My sheets came fully crated using four 12 ft 4x4's, several 2x6 cross members and 2x4's around the perimeter with cardboard on either side of the sheets. it took a couple months, but apparently it was worth it. And I got a set of 4x4's I'll eventually use for my vertical wing jigs.

[Phil]

I built a drill guide to drill all the cap strip holes. I suggest you build one. I built two. One for #30 and #21. The drill bushings are relatively cheap, $10.00/ea. This will insure you don't get the egg shaped holes. It takes longer to drill with a guide but the results are worth it. Make sure to put some chip clearance in the tool. An 3/16" or so should do it. I wouldn't consider drilling a hole in the spar without one unless you have a real steady hand and can accurately drill normal to the surface. Most people cannot. Boeing used to say it takes the average installer a year to drill an accurate free hand hole normal to contour. And that's drilling holes all day long. I believe it. Take some time now to build a couple of simple tools before you begin, it will be worth it.
Cheers
Gerry
Patrol #30 Wings

Gerry
Do you have pictures of the guides you're talking about? I'm planning to set up roller supports on either side of my drill press to drill the spars, but if there's an easier quicker way I'm open to it.

Phil

[X'N]

Here's how I did mine

http://bearhawkforums.com/forum/bearhawk-general-discussion-news/758-jig-drilling-spar-caps

[Barry]

If anyone has issues with ACS, just ask for a Gal named Brenda Lee! She was great and got my replacement sheets of aluminum out pronto. She even shipped them before picking up the damaged ones. It is refreshing to have a company with such great customer service in today's market place.

[geraldmorrissey]

Phil, my drill guides are just small blocks of AL I had laying around that I drilled and reamed for a press fit drill bushing. The only requirement is one flat fay surface and some chip clearance. It is NOT an efficient way to drill holes but you can be assured the holes will be normal to the cap strip surface. Hole location is another matter. I'm confident I'm well within +/- .030 on location. This could be better and on the next spar I will center punch the hole locations instead of using dots created with a rivet fan. Futsing around locating and clamping the drill block takes most of the time. Your system sounds faster but you'll still need to locate the holes and this will take some time. My method is slow but fits my anal style of building. I'll try to post some pictures of my drill guides. You can use plastic drill guides. One I had lasted 2 holes. Of all the plastic drill guides, the round ones with the threaded inserts are the best but I couldn't make them work because I'm drilling from the aft side of the spar and I could not fit those guides over the cap strips because the web flange interfered. I could have ground off one side and made it work but my guides are more stable. In general I would say that most plastic guides with pressed in drill bushings are fine for occasional hole but will not stand up to the rigors of drilling a main spar. Use plenty of cutting fluid. In my humble opinion there are a lot of way's to do these holes but free hand is not one of them. If you use press fit drill bushings, .5" long bushings are plenty long enough. I pressed mine in with a bench vise.
Cheers
Gerry
Patrol #30 wings

[Phil]

Thanks. I think I'll stick with my first idea. I plan to clamp them together in groups, top left caps, bottom left caps etc, with the longest on the bottom, mark the spacing, then feed them through the drill press with a fence and feather board to keep them all centered. I plan to drill them undersized, then use the longest ones as templates for the channels. I may start with a center drill too. Even #30 split point bits tend to walk a bit.

Gerry, I think I'll make up a some of those drill guides to keep in my tool box. Sounds like a good idea.