DATE: 01-17-2025 – TIME: 1:38 – 5:30 ~ 4:00
I sprayed the underside of the cabin floor this morning with zinc phosphate primer. It’s a pretty ugly shade of yellow-green and had not quite cured when I returned to continue work but it was dry enough to work with.
The process here was to redo the FF-06 assembly of the rudder pedals, heel support, sides and seat channels. When we were working on the rudder pedals earlier, because we did not have the brake master cylinders we did not drill any of the brake cylinder support holes, or anything else brake related, even for the slave cylinders, so I decided to begin by finishing off the slave cylinder installation along with the dual brake / passenger side pedals.
It’s not a difficult task although I still maintain it would be easier if there were no holes in the cabin floor itself for the brake cylinder support brackets so long as the factory does not drill the brake cylinder mounting holes in the brackets as well. If there are no holes in the brackets, which there were not in my kit, and no holes in the floor, the only alignment to be concerned with is the bracket to the brake cylinder.
Actually drilling the holes in the slave cylinder support brackets was easy enough but getting them located correctly with the holes pre-drilled in the skin was a pain.
More pictures of the assembly and riveting of the brake pedals to the rudder pedals. This is actually covered on page FF-04 but I had deferred doing the riveting because I was initially going to wait for the master brake cylinders to arrive.
Of note…there is no indication as to where the actual hinge point of the stainless steel hinges needs to be on the rudder pedal so I made sure I had good rotation of the pedal and that it would not interfere with pressing the actual rudder pedal when you are not wanting to press the brake. That meant placing the hinge pine at a position a little forward (ahead) of the vertical when the rudder pedal is perpendicular to the floor.
The hinges are riveted with AS5, steel, rivets. What I did was line up the bracket and clamp it. Then drilled the outboard hole and riveted it, then drilled and riveted the inboard hole, then the centre two. After that, lining up the pedal for drilling was pretty simple.
I managed to get the passenger brakes completed and left the pilot brake hinges for tomorrow, or until the brake master cylinders arrive.
