DATE: 20-26-2025 – TIME: 3:06 – 5:30 ~ 2:30
Well, everything was organized and in its place so I could just move on along and assemble the controls parts of the front and rear jump seat channels.
This comprises mainly the assembly of the LS75F34-2 doubler onto the front jump seat channel, then the LS75C34-3 rear torque tube bearing and the left and right cable fairleads, LS75C41-5 and -6 respectively.
I had the doubler already clecod to the front channel so it was initially just a process of adding the fairleads and bearing.
The order of assembly in the related IPL file and sheet has one assembling the parts with clecos, bolting the left and right torque tube bearing parts finger tight as you have to remove them to insert the tube, and then bolting the left and right cable fairleads onto the back of the front jump seat channel. The left fairlead channel has 2 bolt holes and the right 3. After you have completed this the IPL says to rivet the doubler to the channel with 10 A6 and 13 A5 rivets. I would suggest riveting the doubler to the channel first because once you have the cable fairleads in place it is much harder / impossible to get the rivet gun onto the A5 rivet above the left fairlead.
The bolts called for to bolt LS75C41-5 & 6 to the doubler and channel are AN3-7A with a washer under the bolt head, against the channel, and the nut against the nylon fairleads. I wasted about 30 minutes looking for the 5 AN3-7A bolts, nuts and washers. Not only were they not in the hardware kit, they are not listed on the pick / inventory sheet. I find this kind of crap really frustrating. It would be one thing if this was a brand new kit, but the SD has been in production for years.
The fact is, my kit did not list the 5 AN3-7A bolts on the picking sheet and they were not in the controls kit. There are 6 x AN3-7A bolts, nuts and washers in the fuselage kit that are meant to be used on page FF-03 to bolt the front torque tube bearing, LS75C41-4 to the seat front doubler, LS75F37-3 and channel, LS75F37-1. So while I emailed Roger to find out why I was missing 5 AN3-7A bolts, nuts & washers, I used 5 of the 6 meant for the torque tube bearing and will order 5 more from aircraft spruce (assuming Roger does not respond in time).
It is possible that the specification of AN3-7A on page FR-04 is incorrect and it should be AN3-6A as there are plenty of AN3-6A bolts but it isn’t possible to know without counting all the bolts called out in the drawings and all the bolts in the hardware, plus those I’ve already used.
I also note that, after torquing the AN3-7A bolts to 20-25 in-lbs they are close the edge of the maximum 4 threads showing so I would have thought a -6A bolt would have been more appropriate.
What frustrates me most, apart from the time wasted because of this kind of crap, is the fact that after years, nobody has bothered to check and correct the errors.
A couple of other notes. The IPL file says to pull the rivets from behind. I would have thought that the best practice would have been to put the manufactured head against the nylon parts and the shop head against the metal. Also, the drawings say to rivet the LS75C34-5, elevator cable fairlead with A6 rivets. The fairleads are drilled for A6 rivets, the channel is drilled for A5. It’s not that it is difficult to drill out the hole to the correct size, it’s that nobody bothered to QC the process or drawings. It makes me think there is no quality control.
Well, here are the snapshots of me doing what I can to assemble the control components onto the front and rear jump seat channels.
Just as I finish typing this I have decided to remove the AN3-7A bolts in the left and right cable fairleads and replace them with AN3-6A bolts. The nuts and washers are the same, it’s just the bolt length and I do have a number of extra AN3-6A bolts bought separately and the 6A is going to be a better length than the 7A. I will not be able to make this change for 3 days and I will have to crack the marker to remove the nuts…but that is what it is.