Play in Left Stick

My left stick has too much back and forth slop/play. I installed this some time ago but it seems that I may have opened up the ID of the steel tube on the assembly too much due to using 3/8" drill instead of a reamer. How is the best way to fix this? I looked for an over sized brass bushing on the OD but cant find the correct OD size with a 1/4" ID. Not sure why, but the right stick is perfect. All suggestions welcome.

Thanks.

pilot28906 said:

My left stick has too much back and forth slop/play. I installed this some time ago but it seems that I may have opened up the ID of the steel tube on the assembly too much due to using 3/8" drill instead of a reamer. How is the best way to fix this? I looked for an over sized brass bushing on the OD but cant find the correct OD size with a 1/4" ID. Not sure why, but the right stick is perfect. All suggestions welcome.

Thanks.

Click to expand...

I have a similar situation. How much play do you measure at the top of the stick?

Have you tried wrapping tape around it?

pilot28906 said:

My left stick has too much back and forth slop/play. I installed this some time ago but it seems that I may have opened up the ID of the steel tube on the assembly too much due to using 3/8" drill instead of a reamer. How is the best way to fix this? I looked for an over sized brass bushing on the OD but cant find the correct OD size with a 1/4" ID. Not sure why, but the right stick is perfect. All suggestions welcome.

Thanks.

Click to expand...

My 7 stick was the same. I even ordered a new stick and both were nearly the same. (not the solution) The stock bushing was too small to fit tight. I made a custom bushing for it, several actually. The issue will be that the stick bore for the bushing is not round and/or straight. I had to relieve the center section of the bushing and just fitted the last 5/8" (more or less) on each end the best I could. It ended up pretty tight. And . .the bushing was tight(stationary) when installed so the motion is only between between the stick and busing. Be careful, that bushing can be compressed with the bolt force and expand. It's wall thickness is pretty small stuffed between a .375" bore and .250" bolt.

Now - for nearly all (if not all) flight activities, the small dead zone will make no real difference, it's just puts a bug in your head until you fly.

BillL said:

My 7 stick was the same. I even ordered a new stick and both were nearly the same. (not the solution) The stock bushing was too small to fit tight. I made a custom bushing for it, several actually. The issue will be that the stick bore for the bushing is not round and/or straight. I had to relieve the center section of the bushing and just fitted the last 5/8" (more or less) on each end the best I could. It ended up pretty tight. And . .the bushing was tight(stationary) when installed so the motion is only between between the stick and busing. Be careful, that bushing can be compressed with the bolt force and expand. It's wall thickness is pretty small stuffed between a .375" bore and .250" bolt.

Now - for nearly all (if not all) flight activities, the small dead zone will make no real difference, it's just puts a bug in your head until you fly.

Click to expand...

I had to make several custom bushings on hte 10. I found the same. IDs vary across the length, as much as 10 thou or more and definately not concentric circles. I think that they are reaming them before welding and that is creating variable distortion. Don't know any way to address this other than playing around with bronze stock on a lathe. in addition, most of mine required putting slight tapers on the the bushings by using a file on the lathe. Final product was slop free. Also went back and re-worked the bushings on the 6 to get rid of the pitch slop.

It's kind of a poor design. They should either be spec'ing an undersize ID tube and then requiring their welder to ream after welding or spec a thicker wall on the tubes to better resist the distortion.

One option is to ream them a few thou over to straighten everything out in the bore. Then have a machine shop make you a bushing one or two thou smaller on the OD of the bushing. They can make you a long one and then cut to size for the two sticks.

Larry

Reamed after welding

The-10 and -6,7,9 sticks are all reamed after welding, I don?t do the reaming and don?t know how it?s being done.

Russ McCutcheon said:

The-10 and -6,7,9 sticks are all reamed after welding, I don’t do the reaming and don’t know how it’s being done.

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That's interesting. Thanks for clarifying. I am stumped as to the variations in the IDs of these parts.

I should clarify that the parts are perfectly safe and of good quality. However, with all of the effort Vans put into nice and tight control systems, it is a shame to have slop that is noticable in flight from this one neglected area. less than 10 thou in clearance here left a noticable slop in the pitch when holding an altitude.

Larry

What am I missing? I had a little slop but went one castle nut slot tighter and it took up the slop.

wnplt said:

What am I missing? I had a little slop but went one castle nut slot tighter and it took up the slop.

Click to expand...

You either expanded (shortened) the bushing or just captured the square ends of the tube between the flanges.

If you are happy and it remains that way who cares?

Thanks for all the replies. I ended up having a new brass bushing made oversized. I took the stick assembly into the shop and had them take down the brass bushing until it was a good fit. He had to take a little more off the middle section of the brass bushing. I installed it with some white grease and it now has no noticeabel slop in the stick. One more thing marked off the list.