Assembly of the Aileron pushrods (W-917 & W-918) These are supplied as stock material that needs to be cut to length. This past weekend i primed the interior of all the stock tubes with Akzo by taping closed one end of each tube and pouring the primer inside and swishing it around.
That was the last of my epsoxy primer - so its fare to say that a single two-gallon kit (about $200 plus Haz. shipping) will last you through the wing kit. I primed the outside of the aluminum tubes with the SW988GBP rattle can. The smaller steel tube is already powder coated.
Tonight i cut the tubes to length, which took some interpolating from the plans because the plan dimensions are given from center to center of the bore of the end couplers, so you need to anticipate centering the threads on each coupler and back out your dimensions from there.
The larger aluminum tube gets an aluminum female threaded coupler that gets drilled and pop-riveted (6 ea.) in to the ends. The smaller aluminum tubes get a male threaded coupler inserted inside and drilled for a couple an-470 rivets. (There is an option for welding this coupler too) I drilled out and replaced about four of these rivets in process because they were difficult to get straight with out laying over (rivet length a scosch too long)
These two tubes connect (meet one another) at the aileron bellcrank in the wings. The large aluminum tube continues to the fuselage where it connects directly to the control stick, the smaller steel tube connects the aileron to the bell crank.
Here in-lies the basis for the beautiful control harmony and solid feel of solid push-rod controls (ala, Cirrus, Columbia, LSA's of sorts) as opposed to more traditional chain and cable driven controls (ala, cessna, piper) that tend to get sloppy over time.
