Empennage Installation Continued (4/25/14)

1.7 Hours –

The first thing I wanted to do was to get the elevator pushrods reconnected to the bellcrank in the fuselage. I struggled reaching these parts the other day, but then I realized that the forward top skin still hadn’t been riveted to the fuselage and could be removed to ease access. Once I took a few clecoes out, and could duck under the side of the skin, getting the bolts through the rod ends and bellcrank was a piece of cake.

After the pushrods were installed on the bellcrank, I reattached the aft pushrod to the elevators. With everything connected, I placed the bellcrank in the neutral position and then checked to see if the elevators were also neutral (in-trail). The elevators were slightly up, which meant the pushrod needed to be shortened. I removed the pushrod from the bellcrank, gave the rod end a couple twists and then reconnected everything. With this slight adjustment, the elevators and bellcrank were both perfectly neutralized. I then double checked that more than half of the threads on the rod ends were engaged (well over half on the aft rod end, and almost all on the forward), torqued the jam nuts on the pushrod and marked them with some torque seal. The pushrod should not need to be adjusted anymore (hopefully).

Both elevator pushrods are now attached to the bellcrank inside the fuselage. The length of the aft pushrod has been set, but the forward pushrod still need to be attached to the controls.

Next, I bolted and riveted the up elevator stop to the fuselage, and then riveted the F-781 plate to the forward spar of the vertical stabilizer. Fortunately, all of these rivets could be reached with my pneumatic squeezer. Once the elevator stop was in place, I checked to make sure it was the first thing the elevator horns hit. While the elevator horns hit both the up and down stops before contacting anything else, I still need to check the amount of elevator deflection and possible shorten the stops if the deflection isn’t adequate.

Finally, I re-installed the vertical stabilizer. Right now, the vertical stabilizer attaches with 6 bolts. Two bolts are through the aft spar and the up elevator stop, and four bolts are through the front spars of both the horizontal and vertical stabilizers. Now, all that is left for the vertical stabilizer installation is to drill the lower portion of the rear spar to the aft bulkhead of the fuselage and the tail wheel mount.

The F-781 plate was riveted to the forward spar of the vertical stabilizer. Then, the stabilizer was mounted on the fuselage.

The up elevator stop was riveted and bolted to the fuselage and vertical stabilizer. There is a washer on the between the stop and the vertical stabilizer on the left side to help with the offset of the stabilizer. I do need a longer bolt on that side though.