Quote Originally Posted by cpdutch View Post
OK. After trying multiple combinations and variations of every solution in this thread over a 3 day period I thought I had it licked, and then... I torqued the bolts/nuts that hold the plastic/nylon bearing to the recommended 20-25 in-lbs. Only used 20, which is very little, but I noticed right away that it was more than I had been tightening with regular wrenches. It bound right up, so it was time to rethink this whole approach. The washers under the bolt heads were clearly leaving a deep impression in the nylon bearing/block which seemed like a poor use of the material. Essentially it was cold-flowing under pressure, and since the bearing needs to be held in place by a torqued bolt/nut combination I came up with another approach. I got a piece of 3/16' I.D. stainless steel tube and cut sleeves that would slip over the bolts. Opened up the holes in the bearing block and set them in-place. Their length was such that the clamping force would compress against the sleeve before overly compressing the bearing block against the control column. A little fine adjustment in trimming the sleeves to the right length was a lot easier than sanding more of the bearing block. (I noticed that the shape of the bearing opening was becoming slightly oblong, so I really didn't want to sand any more.) Result - I was able to get a positive contact between the control column and the bearing, and the bearing was held more firmly in place as the sleeves were positively clamped against the tab. It's a variation of the proper approach to design an O-ring seal. The metal-to-metal contact should occur before O-ring channel compresses the O-ring more than a certain % of the O-ring thickness.

Using all the prior suggestions yielded decent movement only if i didn't get a decent torque on the bearing, so this approach solved that issue.

Am interested in other's thoughts on this approach.
Dan Yocum (One Lucky Fox) had a solution for bearing block that was perfect. Go to the Build Logs section and look at One Lucky Fox build, post #35. I did this and it worked perfectly. No deformation of the block, torqued the bolts up and the stick was smooth fore and aft. Also took a LOT less sanding to get it right.

Gary