what metal for throttle cable bracket?

I need to fabricate a bracket for the throttle cable and am wondering if steel from Home Depot or Lowes is OK to use or must I order 4130 from Spruce? A friend told me that mild steel would be a bad idea. Is that all the the box stores carry?

Nearly impossible to answer your question without knowing how the bracket is designed. Much more important is making sure proper thickness, edge clearance, grain direction, bending technique, stress relief, (welding?) etc, etc is maintained. Mild steel is fine in many applications, sometimes better than 4130. Material selection depends on many factors.

The throttle cable bracket is a safety of flight component, make sure your design is well thought-out.

dwranda said:

I need to fabricate a bracket for the throttle cable and am wondering if steel from Home Depot or Lowes is OK to use or must I order 4130 from Spruce? A friend told me that mild steel would be a bad idea. Is that all the the box stores carry?

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Good timing because today I am working on custom brackets for the Throttle and also for Mixture controls. I asked that exact question to an A&P and was immediately told 4130. He also told me to mock it up in aluminum first and install the control cable for proper fitment before fabricating it in 4130.

I will use the 4130. The thickness choices from Spruce are .050 or .063. Several builders and the A&P told me that .050 should work fine. I also checked Showplanes to see if I can use one of their brackets. You will find that they use 4130 as well.

Point to note. I did order the Vans Throttle Mixture kit thinking it would work on my Superior cold air induction, but no such luck. Vans brackets come all nicely powder coated in white so I could not measure an unpainted bracket, but the thickness of the brackets with paint measured .070.

You will have to do the math, but I just grabbed this bit of information from a Google search regarding powder coating. It read as follows: The standard film thickness for a standard powder coating for optimum mechanicals is between 60 and 80 microns (~2-3 mils). Thickness measurements of powder can be taken before and after curing.

Hope this helps some, and to eliminate any confusion of what you read on forums you can always check with Vans to see what they make their Throttle Mixture kits out of.

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I know Vans carries at least three variations for vertical alone. Have you contacted their support to get a list of the variations? I am fixing a homebrew one right now that was so loose I ended up having to get the carb rebuilt!


Take care on the dimensions

dwranda said:

I need to fabricate a bracket for the throttle cable and am wondering if steel from Home Depot or Lowes is OK to use or must I order 4130 from Spruce? A friend told me that mild steel would be a bad idea. Is that all the the box stores carry?

Click to expand...

Airflow Performance sells bracket cables I used on my RV-14A.

Dave,

As stated before Vans has some good control cable brackets.
You can also look at Show Planes:
https://www.showplanes.com/index.ph...=TMC-04S&sid=76o3b1v0bk106889uoo0mi2u9y7z2qu8

Cheers!