Time to get on to the controls and that starts with some work on the torque tube installation. First off, though, in preparation for control cable making I bought a swaging tool from Lowes.
This $20 item is a bargain compared to the professional ones at 250+ and everyone on the Zenith web site assures me it will do a good enough job. Obviously, well-crimped cables are important!
First job was to push the torque tube through the bearings so that the front torque tube bearing can be installed at the front end. This was a bit of a struggle as the bearing is tight right now and I had not noticed that there was a bushing pre-installed in the tube and it had a lip that made it impossible to get through the bearing. Once removed, it was easy to get it through.
The front torque tube bearing has a fairlead installed behind it which is for the rudder cables to pass through. It comes with four pre-drilled holes (two are for rivets to attach the fairlead) so I clamped the fairlead to the bearing and back drilled.
Next up was to drill out the centre hole so I got my drill bits out and went all the way to the maximum with the step drill. This wasn’t enough so I got the rotary grinder out and used it to chip away more of the area. The fairlead only needs to be bigger than the hole so I just kept going until that was achieved.
And that was it for today. Next up is to take that assembly to the torque tube and find the optimum position for it such that the torque tube doesn’t touch the sides anywhere. After that I’ll install some more of the controls components before getting into the cable business.