I noticed that an awful lot of force was necessary on the rudder pedals to move the ruddervators. Since there are multiple bearings and pulleys I was not sure where the source of friction was coming from. I noticed that some friction was coming from the area where the tail boom starts inside the fuselage. This is where the linear motion from the rudder pedals is transferred into rotary motion, which is in turn translated back into linear motion through the push rods in the tail boom. I relubricated that area with only a minor improvement. I decided to roll up my sleeves and take apart the ruddervator assembly and find out what was going on. There are 4 roller bearings, 2 per ruddervator as well as 2 swivel bearings, for a total of 6 bearings. The swivel bearings were in great shape, but the roller bearings were in pathetic shape. I use WD-40 to remove the grease, then degreaser to clean out the WD-40, then plenty of water to clean out the chemicals followed by a heat gun to dry the area out. Lastly, I added some white lithium grease back into the bearings and voila, most of the friction was now gone. It was a major pain to service these bearings, getting the bolts out was not easy. Hopefully I won't have to do this very often!
