I drilled the remaining holes for the horizontal stab spar attach bolts. Since I already had the initial hole drilled, the rest were pretty easy to finish up. A 1/8" shim has to go underneath the attach angles to set the stab incidence to zero. Unfortunately, I used up my last bit of 1/8" bar stock a while ago when I remade a part, so I have to wait on more to arrive for the shims. Since I have to get those shims in place before I can move on to mounting the vertical stabilizer, time to skip ahead to some other things.
I put the elevator pushrod bellcrank back in place.
A few days ago I poured boiled linseed oil into the pushrod. It's all drained out now and has dried up into a really nice protective layer. I cut the pushrod down to size, put the threaded rod ends on, laid out holes and put the pop rivets in. I'll prime the outside later.
The pushrod will have to come out again (like everything - in and out, in and out...), but I put it in place for now since I'll need to tweak the length and set the elevator throw once I put the horizontal stab shims in place.
I'm setting the plane up with electric pitch trim. It's a fairly simple setup really, with a trim "servo" (not really a true servo) that drives an internal jack screw and moves the trim tab connection. The servo mounts to the underside of an inspection cover on the bottom side of the left elevator.
Once again, the measurements called out in the plans bit me. The plans indicate where to mount the two brackets on the access cover, so dumb me, I laid everything out and riveted them in place. I don't know if the size of the servo has changed over the years since the plans were drawn or what the deal is, but the part that moves in and out and drives the rod to the trim horn doesn't line up with the opening. It's off by about 1/8". I sent a message to Van's to verify I have the correct trim servo. Assuming I do, I'll probably need to fabricate a new access cover so I can move the servo over. I think I have some extra aluminum sheet to make the cover vs buy a new one.
