Category Archives: Ailerons

Time: 1 Hour

One complaint with Vans aircraft is sometimes they can be crafty and let cooler air in via some of the holes required in the fuselage. Two of the bigger holes are where the aileron control rods go from the fuselage to the wings. These holes can allow a lot of air to work it’s way into the fuselage. So Abby at Flightline Interiors, who I bought the carpet kit for the RV-8, also make boots that cover this area and allow the control rods to move freely. They are easy to install and have a slot down the side that is secured with Velcro allowing them to be installed after the rods are already in place. They have a plastic disk that has Velcro to attach them to the fuselage side wall. So another little task is complete and hopefully these help keep us warm on our future flights.

Time: 4 Hours

I forgot to post my work from yesterday so at lunch today I figured I better finish this write up. I had plenty of work to do around the house to get it cleaned up as my girl was arriving for a show that she is working in Chicago. When I got done with that I got a few hours in before having to go get her at the O’Hare airport. First task was to prime the long pushrods before I could rivet them.

While those were drying I turned my attention to riveting the smaller rods. They have 2 rivets per end at 90° to each other. Van’s calls for AN470-12 rivets here which are pretty long. I have read where other builders have had problems with the tail tipping over during the squeezing of these. They recommended going down a size to a -11 which is what I did. You have to go slow and control the squeeze as it’s real easy to tip them over. I know this as I did it to two of them! Good thing that drilling them out was not a big deal as the rod pieces are steel and don’t enlarge very easy. Taking my time proved to be the key to successes.

With both rods riveted I screwed on the end bearings and adjusted them to the required length as labeled on the plans. I then attached one end to the aileron bracket and the other to the bell crank.

Now was the time to get the aileron in alignment so that it is a neutral position with reference to the wing structure. Two tasks you need to do to complete this. The first is to get the bell crank in a neutral position. To do this Van’s gives you a jig that has a hole that lines up this the bolt used to hole the small rod to the bell crank. When the flat side of the jig is flush with the main spar and the bolt is through the hole then the bell crank is in neutral position.

Now that we have the bell crank set neutral the aileron trailing edge should be in the neutral position as well. To check this we use 2 of the tooling holes that are in the outboard wing ribs. You drill a hole for and AN3 bolt in both spots on some straight edge, I used a 42″ aluminum ruler. Then drawing a line on the top of those 2 holes as well as the bottom. This gives you 2 parallel lines from the two holes extended to the end of your straight edge. The aileron will be centered between these two lines when in neutral position. If they are outside of the lines the. You just make the required adjustments to the rod ends to get it centered.

I repeated this process on the other aileron and now have them aligned neutral when the bell crank is neutral. The last item I did was to blind rivet the ends on the longer push rods after the primer was dry.

Time: 5 Hours

Now that the flaps are done I needed to start to assembly of the control surfaces onto the wings. First item was to mount the aileron bell cranks to the main spars. These bell cranks transfer the motion from the control stick in the fuselage 90° towards aft and the ailerons. They are powder coated steel and rotate around a brass bushing.

I first cleaned up the top and bottom of the bell crank tube where the bushing slides into. I then made a measurement on the tube and the bushing. Van’s calls for the bushing to be 1/64″ to 1/32″ longer than the bell crank tube. I used the scotch-brite whell and sand paper to get the length perfect. The bushings were a little tight inside the tube so I put the bushings in my drill press which I bought after checking various Drill Press Reviews and turned it on while using some 400 grit sandpaper to hone them down until they slid nicely into the tubes.

Now I had to ream the inside diameter of the bushing to accept the 1/4″ bolt that goes through it. I just placed the bushing in my padded vise and used the reamer in my hand drill. It work pretty slick and the reamer just guides itself and is always centered.

I then assembled the bell crank pieces that will hold the push rod from the bell crank to the aileron. For this I had to cut a spacer from some stock that they give you.

I bolted the bell cranks back into position on the spars but didn’t torque them as I’m not sure if I will have to remove them later. I had originally torqued and sealed the 2 brackets that the bell crank bolts to on the spar back when I was working on the spar but relieved that I needed to remove them to install the bolts for the bell cranks.

With those back on I moved my attention to mounting the ailerons. The ailerons are connected at 2 points on the wings, 1 bracket on each end. They use a combination of bolts, small washers, a large washer and a spacer similar to the bell cranks. The ailerons need a travel limiter, a physical stop so they don’t travel to far and cause damn he to them or the wing skins. Van’s has you make a small angle piece and rivet to the leading edge rib of the aileron. This angle will eventually hit the aileron bracket as it moves closer to its full travel. When it hits that’s the farthest the aileron will travel. My buddy Glen had a much better design that he used on his first RV-8 and repeated it on the one he is building now. What he did was transfer the contact point of the stop from the angle that’s on the rib to the spacer that’s in the bracket on the aileron. Clear as mud? Let me show you in pictures. Normally the stop would happen prior to the spacer hitting the bracket, around 1/8″ as you wouldn’t want just the spacer to be the limiter as it is just aluminum tubing. Glen used a piece of delrin tubing, it’s like plastic to me, and cut it to match the length of the spacer. He then reamed the inside so that the spacer would slide into it. Now when the aileron travels it will hit this new soft covering of the spacer and stop the movement. I first cut the space and made it perfect then I cut the delron tubing to match and reamed it to final size. I then assembled it all together as the plans show along with this new part.

That white spacer will come in contact with the bracket on the spar and stop it’s travel. Glen said this work great and it was super easy to make and install. You can see in several of this photos the various washers and how tight they are. I bought a set of washer wrenches to help with inserting these. They are just thin stainless steel wrenches that have various sized ends that hold washers by spring pressure. You then can slide them into place and when the bolt is inserted pull on the wrench and they pop off.

Again I didn’t torque any of these as I’m not sure if they will need to come off later. I then turned my attention to the push rods for the ailerons. There are 2 per side, one short steel one that goes from the bell crank to the aileron and a larger aluminum one that goes from the fuselage controls to the bell crank. I cut them with my pipe cutter to the length described on the plans. The shorter ones are cut to 23 13/16″ and the larger ones to 69 3/16″ for the RV-8. The plans give you call outs for several different models. Once cut I cleaned up the ends and the insides so that the rod ends would slide into them easily.

I repeated this process for the larger tubes which were a little easier to cut since they are aluminum.

The large rods get riveted to their ends by 6 rivets. 360° divided by 6 is 60° so I downloaded a protractor online and printed it so that I could create a template to make the rod ends.

I used the template to mark all 4 ends of the 2 rods and grabbed my jig I bought from Harbor Freight to drill them. After I bolted the jig down and made all the required adjustments I drilled 3 holes and went completely through the rod making all 6 holes. I started with a #40 bit and used my #30 reamer to enlarge the holes.

I then moved on to the smaller rods in the same fashion. These just use 2 rivets per end at a 90° to each other. Since these are steel I sprayed a bunch of primer inside and rolled them around to get the entire inside covered.

That’s where I decided to call it a night. I should have a few hours in the Hangar tomorrow.

Time: 5 Hours

I had an early flight this morning and was a little tired when I finally got home but wanted to get the right aileron finished today. The process was the same as the left aileron so I won’t go into every detail as I did for that one. I will add that forgot to mention on the other aileron that I used my edge roller on the top and bottom of the leading edge skin to help these sit flat on the main skins after riveting. I also got out my pneumatic rivet puller and did the repairs on it that I knew it needed from a couple of years ago. This was a tool from Harbor Freight and haven’t used it in a long time. My reasoning for using it today was that I could barely squeeze my manual puller after all those blind rivets I did in the left aileron. I hurt muscles that I apparently never use! It took an hour to fix the tool but well worth it as it made quick work of the CS4-4 rivets. Here are a few pics from today’s work. Now on to the flaps!