Tag Archives: bearings

CF – Control Tubes, Brackets and Bearings

Mounting the control tubes in the center fuselage is very much like the process for the rudder pedals. Once again, clearance and alignment prove to be the main variables.

A couple of important discoveries made a big difference. The first discovery was that the elevator and flap torque tubes are not perfectly straight. They’re close, but they are not absolutely perfect. With an ever so slight bow and four bearing points, over a meter of distance, the centers of the bearing bores present different impacts, depending on rotational position of the tube. The variations are tiny, but if the bearing clearances are too tight – you get a surprising amount of binding.

The other discovery was that not all of the bearings have identical inner diameter. It’s a long story, but I ended up with a few extras and happened to find one that has good bit looser fit on the elevator torque tube.

The bearing with the looser fit proved to be ideal, when I put it at the LH end of the elevator torque tube. Careful dressing of the fuselage brackets and the retainer brackets with the Dremel sanding drum resulted in perfect fits everywhere – and fantastically smooth action.

Careful observation of how the bores of individual bearings center around the tube allowed me to ever slightly shift those centers in good directions as I opened the U-shaped bearing capture areas to eliminate pinching of the bearings around the tube. Each custom fit retainer bracket and bearing is marked for a specific location and orientation. I’m confidently optimistic that there will be just enough clearance for friction free operation after the retainers are permanently riveted.

At the moment, the flap torque tube movement is good, but it isn’t quite a limber as the elevator tube. It’s not of great concern. The flaps are driven by a linear actuator and won’t be anything I notice in the hand controls, which will be effortlessly smooth.

The two main control stick tubes are each supported by a pair of bearings along the roll axis. The front bearing is captured by brackets with U-shaped retainers, top and bottom, that are rigidly riveted to the structure at the front of the main wing spar carry-through.

The upper retainer should have been riveted before the carry-through structure was mated with the surrounding center fuselage members. This is another instance of the factory failing to comply with documented assembly details.

I can’t really get good enough access for confident pulling of 4,0 x 10mm rivets, so I’m going to use screws and elastic stop-nuts for the uppermost holes and (probably) use rivets for the balance of bracket mounting holes. I’ve got to end up with good alignment and enough clearance so that the bearings don’t bind when the brackets get pulled down. I’m certain that the retaining brackets are going to shift slightly from their un-riveted positions. I might use screws after all. That would make it reasonably straightforward to take it all apart and re-tweak the final fit until I get it right. Absolutely no binding will be tolerated. Smooth, smooth, perfectly smooth – that’s how it will be. Period.

Rudder Pedals – Tubes, Brackets and Bearings

Work in the center fuselage continued with trial fitting of the rudder pedal tubes. It’s looking good. Initially, the pilot-side (LH) mounting brackets were easily positioned and the 4,0 x 10mm rivets dropped easily into most of the holes. And, after clearing a bit of paint in the holes, the rest of the rivets fit as well.

The flight control linkages rely heavily on composite Vesconite bushings, or bearings, depending on how you want to think about their purposes at different places around the airframe. I’ve known for some time, after reading accounts and watching videos posted by other Sling builders, that getting smooth, friction-free action of the controls takes some care. Some folks use the expression – black magic.

These bushings are supposedly designed to be self-lubricating. That’s all well and good, but I know some builders have resorted to supplemental lubrication. I’m trying to avoid greasy, oily, dirt-collecting areas inside the cabin if I possibly can. I’m having some luck – so far.

Two key factors need careful attention – clearance and alignment. Having enough, but not too much clearance, makes alignment slightly less critical. Buttery smooth operation, without additional lubrication, seems to be achievable.

Opening up the U-shaped retainer areas in the floor brackets and the top caps, so that no squeezing of the captured bearings occurs, makes all the difference. I used a small sanding drum on my Dremel tool at a low RPM setting. Eventually, I was able to capture the bearings in the brackets without causing any pinching of the bearing around the pedal tubes.

Next, I used some fine sandpaper around a piece of dowel to relieve a small amount of material from the bearing’s inner surface, particularly at the edges of where a saw had cut them in half. They were once circular and then cut into halves. Some cuts were better than others, but it’s not unusual to find a slight overhang from one or both halves that narrows the bearing bore at the seams where the halves meet when they’re captured in the brackets. Just a slight amount of narrowing can cause binding.

After repeated cycles of fitting and filing, the result is smooth, friction-free operation.

The rudder pedal tubes came nicely coated with gray primer. Areas on the tubes were masked from paint where the bearings ride. Except – one of the masking areas is misplaced by 1cm. I’d read about this, and sure enough, when I measured I found the off-by-1cm error too. The Vesconite bearings are designed to ride directly on the steel. Relatively soft paint would likely gum up the bearing and defeat the self-lubricating properties. I put some protective masking tape around the tube and used a strip of fine sandpaper to precisely remove additional paint.

Last, but not least – I can see how the Sling-branded rudder pedals are going to look. I think it’s much cooler than the plain T-bars. It took almost 6 months after my quick-build kit was delivered to finally get all of the pedal parts. That was a full year after I’d placed my quick-build order, which included the option. All’s well that ends well.

The Sling-branded pedals are essentially the same as the ones for toe-brakes, except that they are mounted on the standard pedal tubes and the hand-brake configuration is used. The toe-brake option has different pedal tubes, different brackets on the floor and no hand-brake. I know because I got a bunch of those parts. I worked with the factory and eventually got all of the parts I actually needed for my pedals.