Now that I’ve begun working on the common sump I need to get back to the control system linkages so that I can see where things are going to sit.

This is one of those parts in the build where items are getting finalised rather than … “I’ll sort that out later” That ‘later’ moment in time is arriving on several fronts. I have to make feed pipes from the strakes to the common sump and the stick controls are in this area so I really need to know exactly where they end up.

I had three goes at making the inner steel piece you see in pic 1. I have no idea why it was hard. I made the first to plans but of course my common sump changes all that. In the end I remembered that I wanted taper pins here and I could see this was a no slop solution compared to drilling out 1/4″ holes and bolting things per plans. Maybe if you are an engineer you can do perfect holes and get precision fit bolts. I like taper pins.

Pic 2 shows my hand reamer for this job and it takes a while but you end up with a zero slop result. Pic 3 just shows the castle nuts I’ll use with pins for the final fit up. For now they are just loose so I can pull things apart easily while I do test fitting. The universal joint is a spare too. I have the final one drilled out but now sitting in a box. This is going to be pulled apart a lot while I do the sump work.

Rear stick

Taper pin reaming

Pin castle nuts