This evening I fabricated and partially installed the flaperon pushrods. The pushrods are made from AT6-058x3/4 aluminum tubing. When making the control stick pushrods I mistakenly cut 7.75" off of the 6' piece of AT6-058x3/4 aluminum tubing sent by Van's. That left me without enough material to make 2-34.625" pushrods. Last week I ordered a 48" piece of tubing from Van's. It arrived today so this evening I was able to cut 2-pushrods. One out of the original piece of tubing and one out of the replacement piece I received today. I deburred, prepped and primed the tubing and inserted the stud endcaps. I drilled the ends and installed the rivets.
I installed the bearings on the ends of each pushrod and tightened the nuts. Next I installed them in the fuselage. I bolted the foreword ends to the flaperon mixer bellcrank.
The work space continues to get smaller and smaller but my hands don't seem to be shrinking in size. I was forced to use my large curved forceps to hold the nut behind the bellcrank. The pushrods extend from the bellcrank to the flaperon torque arms. I used Krazy glue to attach washers to the inside of the torque arms where they attach to the bearing brackets. Once again, I used the forceps to hold the nuts in place because I could not get my hand into the confined spaces.
Next the flaperon pushrods need to be attached to the torque arms. I will do that at a future work session.
