Foot Pedals

These things trick you into thinking they are easy to install but alas here too are things that get you in the end lol. 

The tube mounts aren't level by any means and ours were off for and aft as well as left to right so first thing we had to do was slot the mount flanges, which made me feel like i was butchering our ship!!

Next came the tube installation, no biggie here, and then on to installing the pedals, positioning the pedals, and then cutting the spacers.  This isn't quite as easy as it looks as you have to obtain a happy medium between the floor pan, foot rests, and the pedal scissors.  We had our body shifted to the passengers side 3/8 of an inch behind the seatback when we built the ship to enable it to line up straight down the center of the ship which, when we got to the cyclic, proved to be a big mistake so we ended up redoing the holes in the floor pan because the foot pedals moved to the right when we took out the shim. 

That's why our holes are so large in the floor pan, another unavoidable compromise for us to absorb!  Once you have your floor pan installed, if your ship comes out like ours did, you'll notice the cross tube is much deeper down on the passengers side than the pilots side.  Bummer what ya end up with is what ya end up with and whether you like it or not its the way it is, it's just another compromise! lol :o)~

use a brake cylinder hone to enlarge the pedal castings, your going to need one anyway when you get to the clutch cylinder to grind the weld inside the tube flat......More Money! lol

Be sure to paint the cross tube before you fit the pedal castings or you'll have to do it again because the paint makes the tube thicker.

Don't get the spacers too tight because they can cause the pedals to lock up and don't use multiple spacers in between the castings because they could cause a lock up one day.  That lesson came from a fellow builder that had that problem so it isn't a maybe it's a definite No No!.

Now remember we're newbies to all this and at the time we were working on these we hadn't flown an inch yet, but only having the initail assembly grease on the tube to lubricate the ship for life seems kinda stupid to us.  Its our understanding these pedals are going to be pretty much in constant motion while flying the ship so we drilled and installed a grease zert fitting in the pedals that rotate on the cross tube so we could lube them without completely tearing the ship down, something we feel needs to be in the manuals for sure as it would cause quite a stir if the foot pedal galled into the cross tube and locking up the tail rotor control not to mention the wear it would cause in the pedal casting as it ran dry of grease.

END