Stabilizer Support Brace Tubes #2
Dean came over and we welded up the thread ends of the brace tubes. I bought the forks from Spruce to measure up the distances just right, and trimmed the ends to fit. The welding went fine. I also trimmed the trailing edge to make it look better and malletted the ends together and welded them closed. I think it came out pretty well. Afterwards, I checked the threads were still intact – they seem fine, although I ran the tap through them one more time to pick up any slag that may have developed on the inside.
After this, we tackled the spacing problem I discovered between the elevators and the stabilizers. After welding on the spacer tabs, they seemed to pull away and not touch the elevators or give them support. We spend about 2 hours trying to fix this. I heated the tabs and tapped them outwards to try and create distance again. Unfortunately I had trimmed them too short before, since when they fanned out I thought they were too long since they touched the elevator hinges.
This didn’t really work. Eventually we tried to heat up the tabs and malleted a thick walled tube up against the tabs to create the right shape. Fiddling endlessly, we finally decided we had it close enough, and stopped for the night. Afterwards, looking at it, I felt pretty unhappy with the fit, and decided next time to create a new spacer tab, and grind off the old ones and do it properly. I will feel much happier during those tailslides…!
Time expended: 4.2 hours. Total time: 459.2 hours.
