Time: 5 Hours
While I have to wait until Saturday to do the brake and fuel line plumbing when my buddy Glen can come over and give me some pointers I moved on to some other tasks that needed to be done. I grabbed the parts for the ground adjustable rudder pedals and started their work. Back when I was working on the firewall and forward floor I took care of a couple of rivet changed in anticipation of these parts. First up was to clean up the edges of the floor angles. I then laid out the rivet holes, 12 per side, and drilled them on the drill press.
At each outboard end of the rudder pedal assembly there is a triangular shaped bracket. You need to have a spacer/bushing made out of a plastic called UHMW. This will allow smooth movement of the rudder pedal frame. Van’s gives you some blank stock and you need to shape and drill them per the plans.
Next I match drilled the 1/8″ holes and enlarged them to 3/16″ for AN3 bolts.
With the holes drilled in the floor angles I placed them into position and carefully lined them up per the measurements on the plans. I matched drilled them to the forward floor and clecko’d them into place. With the fuselage slid forward so the front end was accessible from the bottom I drilled up thru the lower firewall angle and the forward gear tower angle. This gave me matched holes for the two ends as they hit this angles.
I reamed all the holes in the parts, cleaning out the powder coating. I also scuffed up all surfaces with scotch-brite pads so that I could prime and paint. While I started priming the UPS driver came and delivered my fuel pump/filter from Van’s.
I located all the parts for the fuel line runs including the fuel vents. So I should be all ready to run the lines this Saturday. For now I just finished up the painting of the rudder pedal parts and will let them cure for a few days before assembling them.
I think I will keep on this painting roll tomorrow and work on the two roll bars and get them done as well!
