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Wow....11 hours at the hangar today! I think this could be a record for me. Definitely the longest day working on the project. I started out the day buy installing the rudder steel linkages.  Keeping up with finishing rigging the rudder, I installed the bolts for the cable connection to the rudder horns.  I noticed my dehydrator plus for the engine were a little on the pink side....  Back when Dan Checkoway's website was online, I remember him using his halogen shop light to dry out his silica gel. I decided to give it a shot.  I moved on to installing the flap motor. I installed the screw and cotter pin.  Next I installed the end of the flap motor to the weldment and installed the safety wire as prescribed in the documentation.  After that was done, I noticed my silica gel from the dehydrator plugs turned blue! I loaded them back into the cartridges and installed them into the engine again.  I used the shop light again to help quicken the drying of the paint I sprayed on the flap pushrods.  While the paint was drying, I decided to rig up the flaps for good. I drilled two #50 holes on either side of the flap pins, on the flap brace. I then used safety wire to secure them.  One thing I noticed was the left flap's hinge pin was interfering with the aileron controls. I needed to shorten the pin slightly to alleviate that problem.  I had these wingwalk skins for a while, so I figured it was a good day to install them. However, Van's shipped me a wrong one. One of the sides said "RV-6A"! I will have to exchange that. More things to add to the list.  Here is where the evening went to hell. I noticed that pulling the stick full aft didn't cause the elevators to hit their stops. Something was rubbing in the control system. At first I thought the horizontal stabilizers skin was rubbing on an elevator, but that wasn't it. After I spent some decent time investigating, I realized the elevator pushrod end that connects to the weldment the control stick were connected to was interfering. This weldment needed to come out, which was a pain to get in to begin with. Today's productivity just came to a screeching halt.  To remove this welment, I needed to modify one of the seat ribs tops to be removable. If you go with the plans, only the middle two are removable. However, to make the stick really easy to remove, three of them need to be removable. So I used one of the brackets made out of 063 to act as a template for a new one.  Here I am drilling this new bracket to the left seat rib. I then cut off the seat rib top.  Here is where the issue is. You can see the slight wearing in the powder coat. The pushrod end was rubbing here.  I used a file and a die grinder to slightly reduce the area here. Once I tested it, I painted over it with Van's powder coat touch up paint.  And the control arm weldment gets installed again. This was just awful. 90 degrees. Sweat everywhere. And installing a bunch of small washers. However it all got done and everything got torqued down again.  The flap pushrods were dry and I installed them onto the flaps and flap weldment for good. I put some blue locktite on the threaded pushrod end that screws into the flap, as instructed in the drawings. I also ended up needed to enlarge the hole into the fuselage a little more.  Flap is rigged!  I installed the three seat rib tops. Yes, I did leave the newest removable rib top unprimed. This puppy needs to get in the air. I will prime this later...  Finally tonight I installed the nuts and bolts for the elevator and rudder. I used a hemostat to hold the bolt head, and a open end wrench to tighten the nut. Kind of a pain, but its done.  The finished product. Good days/nights work! This guy is getting reaaaaally close to being done. Wingtips next! 
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Last Modified: October 5, 2024 |