Ed, I have found that sometimes you need to use some shim stock to take up the clearance that you are talking about.? You are right - it's not a good idea to just crank down on the nut until the aluminum casting bends enough to take up the slack.? One reason that it's not a good idea is that?it stresses the aluminum casting in a manner that the casting?was not designed for.? The second reason is that when you bend the casting in, the alignment of the straight hole that is drilled through the two "ears" of the?casting is no longer straight.? It is misaligned by an amount equal to the angle that?you bent the casting by.?This?results in even more wear.? (We're talking about thousandths of an inch here.)? This is particularly true of taking slop out of the nose gear scissors.? Those castings are not meant to be pinched down by tightening the bolts.
If?there is a lot of clearance between the ball in the rod end?and the casting,?you might get lucky and get a thin washer to fit in there between one side of the ball and the casting.? If not, you can make a thin washer out of shim stock and use that.? If it is a small enough diameter washer that you need,?you might consider sacrificing a feeler gauge blade or two to make the shim from.?That way you have an endless selection of thicknesses to choose from. Also when you are tightening down all of the rod end jam nuts, make sure that you don't have any binding between the rod ends, the rod end nuts, and the fittings that they attach to.? You should?check that you can still easily twist the control rod?back and forth with?the controls moved to the extreme limits of their travel.? If the control pushrod is not free to twist (around it's longitudinal axis) throughout the entire range of travel of the controls, then something is wrong.? Also be?careful to check how the ends of those bolts clear the surrounding structure.? The clearances in a few locations are very tight and you have to use exactly the right bolt length, and exactly the right number of washers in exactly the right locations to make sure that both ends of the bolts clear everything properly.? Fun stuff, huh?? Of course - take this all with a grain of salt since I'm not licensed or qualified to work on airplanes........ Best Regards, Wayne DelRossi Alon N5618F ? -----Original Message----- From: claveled <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [email protected] Sent: Tue, 17 Jun 2008 12:22 pm Subject: [ercoupe-tech] Aileron Bell Crank Saga Continuation of the aileron bellcrank saga. I removed the bellcrank and found the suspect bearings to be ok. The loosness was caused by worn 60 year old bolts. So hurray! I don't have to remove and replace the bearings. With new bolts it was a nice fit. The new question I have is this. When I attached the bellcrank to the push-pull rod that goes to the spider I noticed that in order to have a grip fit to the Heim ball I had to squeeze the bellcrank cheeks together with the castle nut. This springs the bellcrank cheeks together. The bellcrank is an alluminum casting. I am not to comfrotable with this. If I don't remove the excess play the Heim ball is free to rotate around the bolt instead of the ball boss and the wear will be on the bolt. I am sorry if this is confusing but I found it difficut to describe. All opinions gratefully accepted. Thanks. Ed N3396H
