Working on a number of annoying issues related to how the rudder fits on the vertical stabilizer…
First, with the hinge bearings set to the correct length, the forward face of the counterbalance horn is too close to the vertical stabilizer skin. Not exactly surprising, since I had to deal with the same issue on the elevators, and the fix is the same: just make it fit.
I marked the desired cutout, and clamped a piece of steel to the vertical stabilizer to give me a straight edge to file to. Then I just went at it with a series of files of various shapes.
Result – an even gap all around (despite how it looks in this photo). Not too bad, I'm happy enough with this:
This mini-project I spent many hours on, but forgot to document until I was finished. Between my original rudder stops being slightly too short, and the new rudder perhaps being slightly different, I ended up with a little too much rudder travel – the rudder was able to get too close to the inboard edges of the elevators. I didn't want to remake the rudder stops, since drilling out and replacing the existing rivets would likely have damaged the fuselage, in addition to just being difficult generally. Van's support suggested a couple different fixes, and this is the one I chose – supplemental rudder stop extenders screwed to the existing stops. This is actually similar to what they did with the factory RV-9A, which I confirmed via inspection the last time I was up at Aurora. The screw heads (AN858-8xx) are on the bottom to avoid interference with the rudder cables.
These weren't difficult to fabricate, just tedious – install, test, mark, remove, file, repeat. And if you file off a few thousandths too many – throw it away and start over. I think I ended up making four of these to get two that would work. I sure wish the RV rudder stop design was field-adjustable like a Cessna. To make the process a little easier, I lifted the tailwheel onto my little work table… sketchy to be sure, but easier than laying on the hangar floor.
Then there was some rubbing between the rudder and the vertical stabilizer skin when the rudder was deflected all the way to the left. I shaved the VS skin slightly with a vixen file until the interference was eliminated, although the gap here is still pretty small. I may need to revisit this before the airplane is painted, but at this point that's a problem for the far future.
