Strange assortment of stuff that we worked on today. The landing lights actually showed up in the mail yesterday, but I didn't discover them until I went back to my apartment after working on the plane. We went to Harbor Freight at lunchtime to get the cutting tool we'll need to put those in.
The project for today was to finish reaming out the bronze bushing for the aileron bellcrank. After working on it for about an hour and making no visible progress, I decided we were probably doing something wrong. After fighting with it a little bit more, we decided to give up and call someone that knows more about metalworking than we do. The husband of a lady my dad works with is a machinist, so time to call him. He understood exactly what we were trying to do, but expressed concern that doing it by hand wouldn't result in something that was totally straight - which was the point of using a reamer in the first place (as opposed to a drill bit). In any case, we're going to bomb over there tomorrow morning to see him, and theoretically he'll put it on a lathe and all the reamer problems will go away.
You can see tomorrow's log entry for the conclusion of this not-very-exciting story.
Editorial comments from a week later - getting this bushing competely perfect probably isn't so important to justify all this time on it, in retrospect. The bolt has to fit through the bushing, but it's not designed to spin the bushing around the bolt, the bellcrank is supposed to spin around the bushing/bolt combination. I talked to a local RV builder about this and he said "Hey man, I just used a file." Given that he just flew his RV to Alaska and back, I'd say it works just fine. I'll conclude that as long as it fits, it's okay. Pay attention, though, to the length of the bushing - if it's not long enough, it won't clamp in place and then it might rotate with the bellcrank.
Die Grinder and Cutting Tool from Harbor Freight. We'll need these to work on the installation of the landing lights. |
The Duckworks Landing Light Kit. We decided to go with the halogens (instead of the HID's - it's cheaper), so we got one for each wing. |
Practically the only productive thing we got done all night, other than learning what doesn't work for reamers. Hopefully this will eliminate rooting around in draws for the correct drill bit. |
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