More rudder and brake pedals - 3 hours

I really think deep down I love working on these pedals. Just can move past them.

The new rudder pedal arrived this week so I went to work straightening the bow'd tubes trying very carefully not to kink them. I use the wood stairs in the garage as the are open type and spruce (soft wood) and I wedge the tube in the opening and I am then able to bend them into a relatively straight shape.

 I had also ordered one new brake pedal since one of mine was quite scratched. I matched drilled it to my angles and then I took some time to clean up the lightning holes in all 4 pedals. that's more work than it sounds.



 

More brake pedal work - 1 hour

Saw this today and had a good laugh....

I'm kind of slowed down on my build until I receive new parts. So I putz'ed on the brake pedals. I countersunk all the holes for the AN426 rivets. Better than doing nothing I guess.

The rudder pedal 2-step - 2 hours

Unfortunately a very short build day today. Grrr 



One step forward....two back.

I started in on the build session by setting up all of the dimensions on the F-6118 rudder pedal brace. I then did an initial cutout for the firewall recess.

Once I was happy with things, I then drilled the holes that are to attach the brace to 1/8" per the drawings. Next I need to clamp the brace onto the firewall and begin the final adjusting so that I can complete the rest of the drilling on the firewall.

While messing with the fit, I noticed that I wasn't getting a real nice fit/alignment. Long story short, the rudder pedals have a bow in the long tubes that is affecting how everything aligns. I'll save you the boring details and lets just say that I kinked the WD-655-R-PC rudder pedal tube while trying to straighten the bow. The kink wasn't horrible but I just don't want to live with that. That's an expensive part order (Add in part, exchange and shipping and it's not cheap! ~$250cdn). Yeeesh.

Installed the rudder pedals - 2 hours

Didn't manage to spend a whole lot of time in the garage today, however it was most defiantly a full plane day. Today was an EAA Meetup out in Wetaskawin.

My buddy Mike came over and we headed out to the EAA meet and someones hanger. Fortunate for me there was some really nice F1 rockets out there that I was able to drool over.



As well, I got to take a good look at some other planes as well as a beautifully painted RV7. Also one of the members has a RV10 that I got a good peak at and he was able to give me some advice on avionics and engine choices which I appreciated

Oh...A Stearman!

So needless to say I didn't get a long build session in today but I was certainly motivated to get going when I got home.
I started in by removing the Bearing blocks to the F-719 stiffeners. I clamped the assembly to the bench and used the hand drill to start the holes. I finished the holes on the drill press using a reamer.




When all was done...I installed the rudder pedals into the fuselage.

Installing brake master cylinders - 2.5 hours

Another day spend messing with the rudder pedals. This time I have set up the rudder pedals on the table so that I could install the master cylinders for the brakes. I am very pleased with how well the AN3-56 bolts tuned out. Very smooth motion on the brakes.

It took me some time to figure out how I wanted the Grove master cylinders set up. Being that they are adjustable, I spent some time messing with the turnbuckle until I was happy. Next I used one of my short bits from my 90deg drill and used that to mark the 3/16" hole that needs to be drilled in the brake pedal horn.

I then removed the brake pedals, and disassembled them. The drill bit makes a nice arc "scratch" that I can easy find centre on. Then I drilled them to 3/16". I reassembled everything and it works great!

More rudder pedal work - 2.5 hours

I've been giving a lot of thought as to how to drill these angles, I finally decided that the way I was going to do it is on the drill press, on an angle.

I scanned in the rudder pedal into AutoCAD to find the angle geometery of the pedal. Using this information I was able to create a template that I could use as a setup for the drill press...to drill the correct angle.

It is a tedious process but I managed to clamp each F-6115C angle to a wood block and then open up the #30 holes step by step to a 3/16" reamed hole. The result once the assembly is cleco'd together is that the holes lined up fairly well....very small adjustments needed to make the bolts fit very well.



I then started trimming the 45deg angles at the bottom of the pedals.

More work on the rudder pedals - 1 hour

I've ordered the long AN3-56 bolts for the rudder pedals rather than use the short individual bolts from Van's. I hope that I can maximize on the smoothness of the break action by making this modification. (I really hope so because the bolts are not cheap...~$17 each).

So I used the F-6117A side plates to mark and drill the pilot holes for the AN3 bolts in the angles. I've been giving some thought as to how best to drill these as the holes need to be slightly angled to allow proper alignment of those long AN3 bolts. To help prepare this, I drilled the #30 pilot holes using the 12" bit to help get that proper alignment going.

I have a round file that exactly a #30 diameter so I used that to help get the correct alignment.

I am going to have to give some more thought on how to get these holes drilled so they align properly.