Assembled control sticks and fabricated F-704M stiffner - 5 hours

Now that the touch-up paint is dry I assembled the control sticks. I used my Aeroshell 22 synthetic grease on the bushings/control pivots. Movement is excellent.


Next step that the plans have you do is install the nutplates on the top of the center section. I have opted long ago the clean and prime all of the nutplates. Yes, this is a tedious task, but its what I have chosen based on my reading. I cleaned and primed 20 K1000-08 nut plates. While the primer was drying, I decided to fabricate the F-704M stiffeners. I cut the angles to approximate size and then ground the edges to exactly 4 5/8". This is fairly critical as they stiffeners sit very tight in the center section as I have found. 

I then marked center lines on the pieces so I could line up the holes. I then used masking tape on the center section to ensure that the stiffener would be centered in the web.

Next I had lined everything up and clamped the pieces to the web. I then carefully drilled a pilot hole in the bottom most piece. I disassembled the piece and checked my pilot hole for correct dimensions and then fished drilling on the drill press. Then I reassembled so I could match drill the other holes.

I repeated the process for the top most hole, checking again for correct dimensions and alignment. Drilling again on the drill press before re-assembly.

All the rest of the holes were drilled on the drill press.

Probably the most time consuming process but it is perfect. Next step I fitted the F-782B & 783B pieces and match drilled to the center section.
 
I then completed the nutplate holes on the F-704M stiffeners.



 

Removing stickers from powder coat pieces

So here is a neat trick. I always hated the paper stickers that Vans puts on the pieces as they never peel off nicely, When they are placed on bare aluminum parts its no big deal as Acetone and MEK take the stickers off. However this doesn't work on the powder coated parts as both Acetone and MEK seem to soften or dull the power coat finish. I think MEK would take off the coating completely if you rubbed hard enough.

I ended up using a damp rag and that easily removes the top paper layer of the sticker.




But what is left is the annoying part. The adhesive layer.

Take a different cloth and spray a bit of WD-40 and then wipe, and the Adhesive layer comes off in an instant. Better yet there is no dulling the powder coat finish.