Jur's RV7 Aircraft Factory
2917 hours and counting
Some decisions in life are bare of any obvious logic

Spent quite a bit of time on the installation of the control column. I have been delaying this thinking it would be in the way of other stuff and would have to be removed again but I dan't thinik of anything passing here that might need that much room. A lot of builders have modified more than 2 ribs to simplify installation of the control column and I think they are right. I would do it also if I would have to do it all over again.
There is no way you can preinstall the stick and stickreceptacle upfront when you put in the horizontal control column main pivot tube. You simply can't get it in there.
That means that you can only install the sticks while the cross column is already in. Also,

On the other hand, I noticed that you can't get the bolt in if the stick receptacles are already installed in the column mounts. bolt is to long to slip in between. So I guess there's not really another way to do this (unless installing the bolt in the other direction.
Here'sa shot with the WD-610 control column installed and torqued on the F-633 control column mounts.

You have to install washers between the mount and the control column and make it fit so it all rotates freely without friction. On mine, I had the best result with 2 washers on the inboard and 1 on the outboard side.

Here is a detail of the intallation of the control sticks on the control column.

Then you have to use 'your favorite grease" to apply on the bushings inside the control stick receptacle parts (WS-611 and WD-612. This ensures a friction free non-wearing rotation of the control stik on the bushing attached to the WD-610 control column

Inserted it. This makes the excess grease woosh out but at least you're sure there's plenty inside.

Inserted and installed the bolt with castle nut and cotter pin. It's not easy installing the cotter pin crisp and properly while hanging in the cockpit. I'm glad I did a bit of practicing with this upfront.

For the final step, we have to connect the two sticks together with the F-665 pushrod. This ensures that both control sticks operate simultaneously.
You have to slip in two small washers between the pushrod and the stick.
The pushrod has to be made exactly to dimensions so that the two control sticks are parallel. You do this by marking some common points on both sticks and measuring the distances between various locations. The distance has to be equal at all stations. It took me +-10 times in and out before I got it point on. The thightened the pushrod lock nut and installed the pushrod in place.
Getting the washers in is tricky as they are very small and just fit on the outside of the rod end bearing rotation ball. see the bottom of my previous article for a nifty trick on how to easily slip those washers in.

And here it is. The control column with both stick on for good.

I had some time left and finalised the attach angles for my fuel pump mount attach brackets.

Also drilled them in place

These go underneath F-782C center cabin cover.

Before starting the fuel pump work, I primed the control column connection rod. Since this is invisible, did it with a brush instead of getting the paint gun out for one small piece. Turned out well.

Then reamed the connection holes in the control column weldings for AN3 bolts.

 Same for the stick of the pilot and after that used the primer to also dip the inside with primer.

Ok, time to get to some serious work. Got the auxiliary fuel pump from Andair out of the box and studied the installation instructions.

First you need to measure the exact location of the pump on the F-782C center cabin cover.

I won't have a fuel filter screwed on the input side of the fuel pump since I'm using gascolators. Gascolators also have build in fuel filters.
I think this is kid of safer that way. I the fuel filter clogs, you can still attempt to switch tanks and use the other tank which has it's own filter in the gascolator.
If you only have the one filter in front of the pump and it clogs... you are done and better find yourself a field for an emergency landing.

The andair instruction has you make some stiffener angles that go underneath the cover. The material used is the same as the longeron angles and fortunatly I had some stock length left for both pieces.
Cut the angle to length and draw a centerlin on the top flange. Now you can clamp it and match drill them.

Here's a picture before drilling the last hole. I had to invert the angle on the holes closest to the F704. If you follow the directions in the manual from Andair, the legs attaching to this angle will interfere with the nutplates holding the F-782C cover to the floor stiffener angles. I just inverted the direction, no big deal, same strength.

Here's a look from the bottom.

Don't forget to round the top flange of the angles so that it nests nicely in the curve of the F-782C cover

Drilled nicely in the middle

I continued making the small attach angles that connect to these two support but didn't get finished with them. Will be continued in the next work session.

I also noticed I will need to order new stuff at spruce soon since these are connected with some screws and miniature nutplates that don't come with the engine package.

Small task today. There is a service bulletin RV-7 on the vans support website for the passengers steering stick described in SB 07-2-6 .

The reason for this is that some incidents were reported where pilots reported hard landing incident after the passenger inadvertently pulled out the stick from the stick receptacle on the control column during a landing flare.

To solve it, you have to secure the removable stick in the receptacle. Some builders use a spring pin mechanism but as I am probably never going to remove the stick from the passenger side, I decided to go with the fixed bolt solution as described in the service bulletin.

First I located the position of the hole according to the plan.

during drilling, you have the stick inserted in the receptacle so that it's nicely match drilled. No way to do this seperatly because you can never be sure to be able to drill dead center on the column.

First drilled small pilot hole, enlarged to #13 and finally used the #12 reamer for an AN3-13A bolt.

 first very nicely indeed.

 After deburring the hole

This is the first time on the plane that I'm experimenting with a cotter pin and castle nut.
This is the correct and preferred way to install a cotter pin.
First torque the AN310 castle nut like a regular nylon nut. Then you align the hole in the cavity of the castle nut.
Insert the cotterpin and lightly tap it with ar rubber mallet from the back or pull it with pliers from the front so it's all the way in.

No you can use a small and narrow flat screwdriver to open the pins.
You will probably have to cutoff some length if each leg.
On the bottom side the cutoff is very small. The right amount is bending down not further than the washer to avoid scratching on the underlying material.
Bend over the other leg with pliers and estimate a length to cover 3/4 of the diameter of the bold.
Use a hammer to lightly tap the leg down so that you get a nice crisp bend.

Installing this cotter pin now is a bad idea actually as you can't install the control column with the sticks already bolted so I had to take this apart again. But it was a good exercise to do on the workbench and get a feel for it.

Another little tip on installing the control column : you have to install plenty of washers (sometimes more than one) between the rod end bearings and the mount. This can be a very stressfull unless you use a simple trick.
I used some painters tape and folded it in half leaving a small section exposing the glue. now you can easily stick a washer to the exposed glue part and slide it gently in between the opening. Once is between the opening, you
can use a small flat screwdriver or punch to position the washer in place. Very easy... no extra tool, no stress.

Another open task is mounting the control column in the fuselage. I started analysing the plans and came to the conclusion there is a bit more to this than just bolting it to the control column mounts.

This shouldn't be a surprise as nothing is ever that simple when building an aircraft :)

One of those terrible tasks they make you do is enlarge the diamer (or in other words drill) the inner part of a long bushing.

This bushing is used at the base of the WD-611 and WD-612 control sticks and needs to have a slip fit  in the clevis on WD-610.
In other words, the bushing you get is too long and the inner diameter of the bushing needs to be enlarged 1/4" for an AN4 bolt.

The stick itself slides over this bushing and the steel of the stick should be slightly shorter than the bushing so that it rotates nicely and freely around the bushing without squeezing agains the WD-610 clevis.

Enlarging the inner diameter of a long bushing is easier said than done if you don't posses a metal lathe.

As I don't know anyone who has one, we'll have to go the old style way on this.

I decided to ream to 1/4" using the bench drill. I have a clamp that holds with some jaws that hold the bushing nicely at 90°. To ensure this, I used a straight angle to verify.

Then gently sent the reamer through with plenty of boelube lubricant.

 The result is not bad, but it's certainly not perfect. On the top side where you enter the material it's dead center. On the other end it tried to find it's way down and was little off center.

The other one was even more off. I'm assuming this is not going to be an issue. There's plenty of material left to support the AN4 bolt. In the end the bolt will take the load and the busing serves as a support for rotation.

Then I started shortening the bushing in length so that it would slip between the clevis of the WD-610.

Started the rough work on the 3M wheel  but soon found out that it would be impossible to keep the base nice straight and perpendicular to the shaft.

Instead I started using the good old sandpaper and bench drill technicque to gently shorten it. This ensures absolutly perfect perpendicular bottom and top.

I made a little video of the process below.

Than I installed bushing and WD-611 and torqued the AN310 castle nut on the AN4 bolt. To my surprise this completly jammed the controls. Not good...

After evaluating this a bit, found out that actually the sides of the WD-611 and WD-612 are welded and are a bit wider than the actual place where the bushing runs through.

Started grinding it down a bit using a key file. Be gentle and make sure you don't change the shape of the circular tube where the bushing runs through.

they annoying part in this is that you take away the powder coating of the steel and thus you must prime that exposed metal again... did that and now it's paint curing time again.