M

mikeangiulo

Active Member
I've got my rudder on the plane for the first time and the forward portion of the fiberglass bottom just touches the tailspring. And that's with the plane not loaded so it can't possibly be ok.

Did anyone else have this problem? I've already drilled the rudder bottom to the rudder and the fit is great so I doubt that I was supposed to shorten it substantially. Has anyone else had this problem?
 
Mike this is pretty normal for the tail dragger aircraft. The same part is included with the nosewheel aircraft. There really should be a different fiberglass part for the TD aircraft. If you search you should find some previous posts on the subject.
While trimming I fitted the bottom fiberglass so it matched the lower fuselage lines. I then cut the lower front piece and changed the radius to provide clearance for the tail wheel spring. Some have trimmed the rudder bottom with a slight angle allowing the forward part of the fairing to be higher to obtain clearance, and others have trimmed past the trim line all around setting the fairing higher. There probably are other fixes as well!
 
I trimmed the forward top of the fairing to provide about 3/4" clearance. That portion of the tailspring doesn't bend much. Most of the flex is toward the aft end of the spring.
 
Bummer. Well I've already drilled and countersunk the holes in the fiberglass where it should attach so if I try and angle the top the whole thing won't fit

Any ideas other than carving out the bottom?
 
You can cut it off and re glass. Don't do a channel as I saw on one airplane. The rudder has to swing left and right.
 
Mike it really isn't that bad. It also is a good place to start practicing fiberglass work (not easy to see). After I cut off the front of the fairing bottom I used an inflated balloon on the inside to do the initial fiberglass layup. This yielded a nice rounded radius. After that cured I added more layups inside for strength and used micro balloons and epoxy to finalize the shape.



Here is my son doing some layups. Hey Pat, where are your gloves?
 
I'm glad you mentioned that...

Mel said:
Don't do a channel as I saw on one airplane. The rudder has to swing left and right.
Click to expand...


...cos that was going through my mind as I was reading this post (not at this stage yet). Would I have thought about the left/right interference? Maybe. Maybe not. Thanks Mel.
 
ok thanks for the encouragement.

I was about a moment away from pop riveting it on which would have made it much more difficult to work with! Glad I put the rudder on to swing it through and just see how it looked.
 
Mike,

This is "normal". I trimed the edges of the rudder bottom, which raised it enough to clear the spring.

Click on this picture and check out the 5/26/06 entry:
 
Same as Bill

I just did this and followed Bill and Mels advice turned out fine, pictures on blog. Measured from the bottom of the lower rudder hinge to the top of the tailwheel spring, deducted 1/2 inch, marked the cap and cut (with dremel with the 2 inch cutting wheel). Easier than you think.
 
Rockyjs said:
Mike this is pretty normal for the tail dragger aircraft.
Click to expand...

Im not so sure this is 'normal' at all for an -8.

I built mine per the plans and there's plenty or clearance. There's just no way for it to touch. Further, I've never heard another -8 builder mention this, can't beleive I'm the only lucky one that had it fit wthout any mods. There is only so much room from the top counter weight to the bottom edge of the rudder. I can't picture how you could manage to get it low enough to hit the spring.

Any other -8 builders out there have to modify there rudder bottom to get it to fit?
 
Just so you don't feel slighted

These kinds of problems come on NLG airplanes as well. I built an RV-6A and had interference between the nosegear strut and the filter air box. I had to cut off a section of the FAB in line with the angle of the nosegear and build up a new fiberglass wall on this part of the box. There were several little features like this in the kit to build character I'm sure. After a while you don't even ask the factory about it anymore. This forum works fairly well on this kind of thing but some unique production errors need to be brought to the company's attention. On my plane the rear spar and aileron mounting brackets were drilled differently. I fixed it and called the company. They said Oh, we know about that and your fix is substandard. Redrill the holes for screw mounting to fix the alignment and ignore the one extra hole. They supplied the screws and they were right but it made me a little uneasy that I wasn't told about the fix before I called.

Bob Axsom
 
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