Now that the balance of the ailerons has been determined, before the weights are permanently attached, the torque tubes need to be attached. There is a tube embedded in the aileron that extends about 3 inches. This tube needs to be connected to the six foot long aileron torque tube. This is accomplished by joining them using a short steel tube that is inserted into the aileron tube and torque tube. It is then drilled and bolted.

Drilling the hole in the torque tube and joining tube is relatively easy. A centering jig is used with a drill press.

Here’s the torque tube with the joining tube bolted in place.

But the hole in the aileron tube is tough. It’s not long enough to use with the jig. So it has to be done by hand.

We will drill a slightly undersized hole from each side and then redrill with the correct sized bit all the way through. But first the location of the hole is marked.

Marking a spot on exact opposite sides of a tube can be a bit tricky. But as usual, Malcolm’s got a trick. A simple drafting template used for drawing circles.

Then the holes are drilled and bolted together.

Before we begin with the engine installation, the holes through the firewall for the push-pull cables have to be drilled. The manual says to drill through the firewall from the rear and the gear bulkhead from the front. The challenge is that the two points aren’t on the same elevation. The push-pull cable is angled down.

Malcolm has a really long drill bit that he uses for this.

The location on the firewall is determined and also on the gear bulkhead. Then the hole is drilled through the firewall with a guesstimate of the angle downward. Then after the bit is through the firewall, I guide the bit through the gear bulkhead on the inside. With two people and the right drillbit, it was easy.

I’ve already created the elevator trim hardpoint and built the bracket. So now it’s time to mount the trim motor. Unfortunately, I miscalculated the bracket so I’ll have to build a new one. But the existing one will work for now.

The bracket when the trim actuator connects to the trim spring had to be drilled. Then it is attached to the trim actuator and spring.

Next, the other end of the spring get bolted to the clamp which goes on the elevator torque tube. Malcolm deviates from the factory method in how the spring is attached to the clamp. He likes to stagger the holes. I like his method so that’s what we did.

The question mark looking thing is the elevator trim spring. You can see at the bottom how it’s bolted to the clamp.

We held off on bolting the clamp to the torque tube until we could confirm some measurements. Once the clamp is bolted to the torque tube, it’s too late to turn back.

The holes in the firewall for the aileron cables have already been drilled. So the next step is to route the cables and attach them to the aileron torque tube bellcrank. Mostly, it’s just mounting the cable attach mounts and bolting the rodends to the bellcrank.

Looking down and the bellcrank.

Here you can see the cables as they go outwards and turn towards the back.

From the engine side of the firewall on the co-pilot side

I want to get as many tasks that require the wings on done before the plane leaves Malcolm’s shop. We can easily get both wings on in his shop. In my shop, it’s a chore just to get one of them on.

Earlier, we attached the (steel) torque tubes to the ailerons. So we’re going to work on the wing root end. First I have to fabricate the brackets that support the torque tube and bellcrank. The factory does this significantly different than Malcolm so my brackets are a LOT different then most others.

Here is the pilot side bracket:

And the co-pilot side:

Then the aileron cable support bracket has to be built. Here is the co-pilot side.

You’ll notice where the cable attaches to the bellcrank that there is a hole in the bellcrank above where the cable is mounted. That hole at the very top was the only hole in the bellcrank. Before we got to this point Malcolm started measuring for this extra hole. I asked him what he was doing and he said “The factory hole is too far out. You can’t get enough motion with that hole so you have to drill another one closer to the torque tube.” This kind of stuff used to make me nervous; Off the cuff mods that aren’t called out in the manual. But I’ve learned to accept it when Malcolm says “do it because otherwise it won’t work.”

After this we drilled the bellcrank and torque tube and bolted everything together. The manual says that we should have 2 1/2″ of aileron travel when the stick is moved from one side to the other. And we got… 2-1/2″. Had we used the factory hole, we would have had significantly less. Then we would have had to pull off the bellcranks and drill the second holes.