Stjohn's RV-7

7 hours.
This is kind of a double entry, from today and yesterday. In this episode, I fitted and drilled the plastic bearing blocks for the pedals, drilled the pedal mount points out to proper diameter, and fit the center bearing support. Then, in Act II, I made the brake pedals. Like so:

Here’s everything clecoed into place. Bearing blocks are not yet drilled to the longerons, that was done right after this photo. That was definitely a “Please, [insert deity of preference], don’t let me f**k this up” moment, because the metal they bolt onto runs the length of the plane and replacing would suck. A lot. It actually went OK. I haven’t drilled the extra holes for adjusting the positioning of the pedals. I’ve came to these measurements by sitting in the ship with a cold Tecate, simulating the optimum pedal location. I just need to find a CFI roughly the same size as me, which is pretty normal.

Detail of the bearing block and the pedal clecoed to the bolt hole on the weldment.

Pedal clecoed together, countersunk and roughed up. I’m going to paint them later, so I figured I’d just rivet them together now.

3 of 4 pedals ready for riveting

Here’s where I messed up and put the weldments in with the wrong pedal forward.

4 riveted brake pedals ready to go. The misconfigured weldments has since been fixed.