Control cables

I am having a fun time with control cables and have a question about the travel of the quadrant, I have the CT 83F DELUXE - 3 quadrant and I can?t get the travel of the mixture, throttle or the prop to go the full travel on the levers. All the controls go stop to stop at the engine but the levers don?t go all the way forward and aft at the quadrant, is this normal? I wanted to leave all levers about a 1/4" from the stops on the quadrant. I can drill another hole in the throttle arm but the mixture and prop arms don?t have the room to add another hole. When I pull back on all the levers they are about the ?? I am looking for but when I push them all forward they all end up about ?? from the forward stop. Any ideas?

So long as you have full travel on the engine ends, you've got it made! The common problem used to be that the quadrant would go full throw, but the engine controls wouldn't and THAT is a problem!

If I had your situation, I'd probably leave it and be happy.

Ditto

The purpose of the typical 1/4" cushion is just to make sure you have reached full travel. (Cessna et al [I believe] use that number mainly as a rule of thumb)

I threw away the levers that came with the quadrant and made new custom ones. I don't know why they sell the levers with holes drilled in them since there is no way that every engine out there has the same travel on mixture, throttle, and prop. After installing my engine and measuring the correct amount of cable travel for each control, I made the levers with the hole at the correct radius to allow about .040" clearance between the lever and the end of lever travel on the quadrant. While I was at it I made the levers triangular shaped so that the midpoint of travel is at the top of the lever rotation curve.

I can post some pictures if anybody is interested.

What Ironflight said.....

You are doing good if you have some excess quadrant travel. Adjust the stops so that the levers all line up nicely at full forward, about, say, an 1/8" from the forward quadrant stop. Then, if the levers are somewhat misalligned at the aft stops, it doesn't matter much - you would never have them all back at once anyway (except for an engine failure in flight and you would want coarse pitch and closed throttle.)

I would love to see pics

Noah, I would love to see some pictures if the offer is still good. I am having all kinds of pain trying to get full travel on throttle and mixture. I think the prop is going to be ok. In another thread, Roberta and others mentioned drilling a new hole higher on the levers to make it happen.

Thanks,

Yes, I can post some pics, but it will take me a day or two,
Hang Tight...

I see no reason for, and the Vans instructions confirm for the MT Governor, the Prop/RPM lever to get to the Governor "Min RPM" stop (ours does not). It must, of course, reach the "Max RPM" stop...

Here's some pics

Here are some pics of my custom quadrant control levers...