If at first you don't succeed........

[rammon3]

Here is the steering arm I removed from my rudder yesterday. It never ceases to amaze me what some people will do.

[Hank Jarrett]

Re: If at first you don't succeed........

HOLY CRAP!!!!!! I had ONE extra hole in mine and was upset! A very good welder should be able to weld on a new piece of tube and fix it so don't trash it. Let me know if you need a good welder, I know one who trained Nuke Sub welders and he is top notch.
Hank

[rammon3]

Re: If at first you don't succeed........

The arms are also bent, so I'll probably end up replacing it with a modified J3 fork. The rudder itself is pretty beat up with bent and broken ribs, rusted out trailing edge, and a bent leading edge. This one's gonna need some serious surgery to repair. The other tail feathers aren't too bad, though.
You should have seen the wiring I cut out. I can't believe this installation got signed off. There are "mystery switches" and wires just hanging under the panel that were twisted together and taped. All of that's getting tossed out anyway, so I really don't care. I just hope the fuselage structure is healthy when I get the fabric (razorback, ugh!) off.

[flyguy]

Re: If at first you don't succeed........

I have pictures and a drawing of a steering arm assembly in my box of Tcraft stuff. It is welded up of 1/4" X 1/2" steel with fillets attached to the original shaft. It is pretty easy to make one up that is much better than the original. Not sure about making it "legal." I can report that mine works fine.

Personally I don't like the aluminium ones as when they are turned down to fit the rudder they look really flimsy/weak at the shaft-arm interface.

DC

[VictorBravo]

Re: If at first you don't succeed........

That's a weak spot that could cause a very big surprise at the wrong moment. I've never had one break, but it seems that a welded steel arm would be a pretty good example of preventative medicine.

I can remember drilling the holes in a new aluminum arm, trying to match the hole pattern in the lower rudder tube. What a pain, and it immediately resulted in oval, messy holes.

A good option might be to simply weld a .125" 4130 steel arm to the bottom of the rudder and not even bother with an aluminum casting. This would make it a half hour more time consuming to do the fabric on the rudder, but it might be stronger and one less failure potential.

[Len Petterson]

Re: If at first you don't succeed........

Matching old hole what are not true in the center off a shaft is hard, if not imposible.
Maybe weld a new stem to the old rudder horn, mine is solid steel.
As you are wrighting about the rudder beeing in poor shape as well , why not put in a new rubber post and drill both new part to match.
A Vee block and centering the tube and stem on it and drill right through.
After the first hole is drilled , but a bolt in it so the assambly does not move on you. Now you can safely drill the other holes.(;f
Len