Rudder pedal friction

[RandyL]

Randy, looking at your build site, your pedals are in, or am I missing something?

The previous owner installed them but I didn't like the considerable friction so I took 'em apart and started over. I needed to cut off the horns to convert them to adjustable style and drill lightening holes in the pedals themselves anyway. This required me to get all the parts re-powercoated. All the parts were gray, they will now be white with the pedals black.

So I guess the lube of choice would be LP2 for all control connections including these plastic bushings against the steel tubes?

[kmul]

the plastic bushings are the same as the flaperon bushings i think. in the wing section of the manual there is a caution against certain lubricants with aromatic components. i had used some rotella grease on one side before i saw this. emailed john and he said that it was ok but that his preference in this spot was white grease. which i used on the other side. both sides have a very smooth action with the white grease side a hair smoother.

[Dick B in KY]

Nice to know I'm not the only one having this problem with friction. Thought I was going nuts trying to free up the pedals. Finally put them in a press and un-sprung them. Have not hard mounted them yet so may have more work to do. I used a long round file to clean out the welding slag on the inside and also removed all powdercoat. I used lithium grease on mine. Great minds think alike.

Dick B

[Dorsal]

For what it's worth I had to shim my outboard bracket to get it to remain square after I torqued it down.

[Sabre]

Perused everything I could find on the rudder pedal installation but I still had question concerning the torque tube and inboard rudder pedal. Is the torque tube suppose to rotate in bearing and the bearing rotate on the torque tube or does it matter? The manual states to sand the torque tube to achieve smooth rotation so I'm assuming the bearing rotates with the inboard rudder pedal and the torque rotates within the bearing. Thanks

[n85ae]

That's the trouble I had. The mount points were not square, so washers and
shimming to the rescue.

Jeff

For what it's worth I had to shim my outboard bracket to get it to remain square after I torqued it down.

[Sabre]

Thanks for the posts from all on this subject. After reading through all them a couple times and inspecting my respective parts I found that most of my time was spent truing the parts. Where the horns are welded on to the tube distorts the tubing causing it to be out of round - I was able to use hand clamps to press them nearly round and then with a file while removing the slag I also removed small amounts of material to make the tubing round (a lot of measuring). I also found that 3 of the bearings were nearly identical but the fourth one was thicker causing the ID to be smaller. I polished this one to match the other three. Once all parts were true (again a lot of time measuring pretty precisely) things went together pretty smoothly. I did not have to do much sanding to get the desired fit or cut the bearings (still need to install though). I also found that any high spots in the PC (OD) or inside the tubing showed up on the torque tube (bearing material rubbed off, requires continuous cleaning of parts) indicating where material needed to be removed. Also doing a initial polishing the ID of the bearings helped a lot to remove slag/roughness in the bearing that would get deposited on the tubing making it sticky and hard to turn. If the bearing does gets suck on the tubing isopropyl works great a temporary lubricate to remove them without any messy clean up. Hope this helps future players!

[Sabre]

After working on getting the seat pan installed so I can decided on placement of the rudder pedals that will be most comfortable for me I did a final inspection of the rudder pedals before committing them to riveting them together. I have to say I'm a little concerned with the plastic bearing rubbing against the weld for the rudder horn as well as the spacing of the head of the clevis bolts holding the pulley (adjustable rudder pedals). The weld at the rudder horn is less than smooth and seems like it will cause increased rate of wear at the bearing resulting in potential future binding of the clevis bolt heads. I've thought of adding a thin spacer between the weld and bearing of the torque tube and inboard rudder pedal tube. Am I bearing overly concerned here? The assembly seems a little questionable to me? Appreciate any thoughts on this.

[efwd]

I don't really know if I am understanding you but.......
I am thinking of the bearing that is supposed to be cut across one side of it as is stated in step 10 of the that process. Any chance that is what you are speaking of?

[Jerrytex]

IMG_1398.jpg

I split the bearing and it's still tight. I mainly want to verify that torque tubes are the same size.