Torque Tube Bearing Support and Toe Brakes (2 hr)

I made a mistake taking the fuselage pieces apart as I realise that right now I’d like to be working on the front skins and firewall, and probably the main gear struts, too. So sometime soon I need to get a couple of people to come help put the two pieces together again.

Until then there are a few odds and ends I can work on. One of these was adding the bearings to the torque tube bearing support. There are three bearings, one for the torque tube (and it comes with a doubler) and two for the rudder cables.

The torque tube bearing assembly is pretty easy, enlarge the pilot holes to 3/16″ and bolt on with the right size bolt (an AN3-7A, no less).

The rudder cable bearings are a little trickier, but not much. You take each of the square plastic bearings and centre them over the pre-drilled hole for the cable and drill two holes for rivets.

The rivet holes get expanded to size 30 for an A4 rivet, the centre hole to size 20.

At the suggestion of the DVD I made the cable hole in the metal slightly larger so that there is no chance of the cable rubbing on the metal.

The second bearing requires an extra step because it overlaps the lightening hole in the bearing support

Here is the final assembly (from the back)

Next random job was to join the toe brakes to the rudder pedals. First take the piano hinges and layout two rivet lines, pilot drill.

Then came the toughest part of the day, determining which was the left and the right rudder pedal as I really did not want to get the brakes on wrong. I didn’t expect it to be tough but I had to study the plans, the photo guides and the video several times before I was sure of myself. I wrote LEFT and RIGHT on each, to be sure.

The long side of the piano hinge goes on the back of the pedal. It’s a bit tricky to get the first two holes drilled as the bit wants to slip all over the round tube but I got it done.

The plans call for a special “AS5” rivet for the toe brakes, these are made from stainless steel.

The video suggests that you hand rivet these to avoid breaking the pneumatic rivet gun. That is all well and good but I pretty much broke my arms instead. No one told me I needed to work out as a pre-requisite to building a plane.

At this point you are supposed to put the assembly into a vice and bend the bottom of the hinge around the pedal so that it doesn’t stick out. I completely failed at this so will punt it until someone with more of a clue can help me.

The toe brakes are completed by centreing the other side of the hinge on the brake pedal and back drilling through the holes.

All the holes are drilled to size 20

and riveted with those body builder rivets.