Dave’s RV-7A Building Log

Riveted together the brake pedals and bolted them into the rudder tubes. After making sure the rudder tubes were both in the neutral position, I lined up all 4 brake pedals in the middle. I started using the Dan C method of clamping an aluminum bar across the two pedals, but looking down through the tubes they weren’t lining up very well. I ended up tightening the nuts holding the pedals on and then used friction to hold them in place. I think I can then swing the one tube enough to get a drill in there.

For now, I decided to just prime the brake pedal parts with the GBP-988 rattle can. I’ll probably paint them the same color as the rest of the interior. The primer comes off easily with acetone, so I can always spray them with something different later.

I spent some time thinking about the next steps. I need to assemble the brake pedals, drill the rudder assembly to the fuselage, drill the forward floor stiffeners and baggage area stiffeners. And then drill out everything else on the fuselage. Then it’s time for disassembly. Hopefully that will all happen this weekend, but it might not. I have a major project lined up tomorrow, replacing the living room picture window with french doors. What better time to cut a 6′ x 12′ hole in the side of the house than January?

I countersunk all of the holes for the brake pedals. In fact, I accidentally countersunk the hole for the attachment bolt. No big deal, since it gets drilled out to #12 anyway. So I went ahead and drilled out all the attachment bolt holes to #12.

I pulled out the rudder pedal weldment tubes to see how the whole thing goes together. I had to clean out the holes in that to #12, since the power coating built up a little. I put the tubes in the bearing blocks and mounted it temporarily to some blocks on the bench and added one brake pedal that is clecoed together. It looks very cool.

Tomorrow I’ll try to do some priming on the brake pedals. It’s way too cold to prime outside, so I’ll have to figure out a make-shift paint booth in the garage.

More deburring of the rudder/brake pedals. These things had a lot of rough edges on them. After countersinking and priming, they’ll be ready for riveting.

Drilled and partially deburred the rudder (actually the brake) pedal parts. All of the pedals seem to have a slight bow to them, probably from the punching process. I made sure the bow is going the same way on all of them, bowing forward.

The weather turned out to be absolutely fantastic today. It was cold, but perfectly clear with low wind. I rented a 172 and flew down to Westport and had lunch with my parents. I also took my dad up for a short flight. It was just the motivation I needed to get through the upcoming deburring and dimpling of all of the forward fuse parts.

I did do a little bit of edge prep and angle cutting for the brake pedals. I went for the passenger side brakes, so I have 4 pedals to make.

I worked on fitting and drilling the F-796B, C, and D, angle and spacers for the fuel tank attach point. The instructions and plans have you drill one hole and then use that to position the parts. I drilled the hole, but it was way off when I tried to fit the angle. I had to grind off quite a bit from the top of it. By the time I had it fitting well, there wasn’t much of an edge distance for the bolt at the bottom. Considering the tank attach brackets actually use the middle and top bolts, I’m not too worried about the edge distance of the bottom bolt.

I put the bottom skin back on in preparation for drilling out all the remaining holes. This point in the project uses a lot of clecos. I’m running especially short of 1/8″ clecos.