[Snowflake]

Yesterday I had the Import Inspection done on the RV-6 I imported to Canada from Idaho. The inspector essentially did a "Final" inspection, as if I had built the plane myself. He was very thorough, looked in all the nooks and crannies, and asked all the right questions of me about the plane and how it performed, what snags I had already fixed, etc.

In the end, everything looked good, except for one thing: The overhead pedals don't have the reinforcing gussets, so he took a look at the locations where failures are likely. He thought he could see a small line at one of the welds, so he told me to take a look and see what I thought.

Sure enough, once I managed to get the right combination of light position, body position, and mirror position, I could clearly see that the paint was cracked at the join. For reference, the location is the Pilot's right foot pedal, at the join to the horizontal torque tube, on the forward (firewall) side of the tube. I'm sure you can all guess what word came to mind. I'll give you a hint, it rhymes with "duck."

So, after putting all the inspection covers and cowlings back on, I set about removing the pedals. It turned out to not be that difficult, just a bunch of careful manoeuvering until I could get the delrin blocks off the ends (i'll split them before putting them back). It was made a little more difficult because the throttle/mixture/carb heat cables all run below the bars, sort of "trapping" the pedals in place.

I took the offending bar to a friend with a sandblaster and an oxy-acetylene setup so we could fabricate some gussets and weld them in. After sandblasting, we found that the passenger side pedal on the same bar was also cracked, but on the rear side (passenger side) of the pedals. This fits with the failure mode that Van mentions in the Service Bulletin (failure on the compression side), but the Service Bulletin doesn't mention anything about putting gussets on the *front* of the tubes, just the back.

Still, three cracks later i'm wondering if it would be better to just buy new pedals pre-welded (and powdercoated?) from Van with the gussets in place, rather than impose on the already over-abused-hospitality of the local community to weld in new gussets... Any other opinions?

Oh, and I should add that I think my inspector earned every penny of his fee with this inspection. Looking at the pedals end on, it looks like the pedal had already started to fail, as the two right-foot pedals are about 3-5 degrees out of allignment. The words "imminent failure" come to mind, not something i'd like to have happen.

 

[C-GRVT]

good catch

It's entirely up to you of course whether you repair or replace the rudders. On my 6, the overhead rudder pedals did not have the gussets, but Van's supplied the gussets free of charge. I had a local welder install them. No problem.
When installing the rudder bars, I did notice that they were not "true", that is, the centre delrin bearing block displaced slightly when rotating the bars. Easy to fix with some minor bending of the bars, and I don't know whether the lack of "true" had always been there, or was introduced by welding in the gussets.
Bill Brooks
Ottawa Canada
RV-6A finishing kit

 

[L.Adamson]

It's entirely up to you of course whether you repair or replace the rudders. On my 6, the overhead rudder pedals did not have the gussets, but Van's supplied the gussets free of charge. I had a local welder install them. No problem.
When installing the rudder bars, I did notice that they were not "true", that is, the centre delrin bearing block displaced slightly when rotating the bars. Easy to fix with some minor bending of the bars, and I don't know whether the lack of "true" had always been there, or was introduced by welding in the gussets.
RV-6A finishing kit

Pulled mine out, welded and re-installed the orignals too.

L.Adamson -- RV6A

 

[SMO]

Wonder who that was

Yesterday I had the Import Inspection done on the RV-6 I imported to Canada from Idaho. The inspector essentially did a "Final" inspection, as if I had built the plane myself. He was very thorough, looked in all the nooks and crannies, and asked all the right questions of me about the plane and how it performed, what snags I had already fixed, etc.

Did you happen to get a certain inspector that flys an RV out of your field and works for a major Canadian airline? I had this fellow do the import inspection on my -4 at Pitt Meadows, first class person all the way!

 

[Snowflake]

Did you happen to get a certain inspector that flys an RV out of your field and works for a major Canadian airline? I had this fellow do the import inspection on my -4 at Pitt Meadows, first class person all the way!

Yep, that might be him.

After consulting with local experts, i'm going to try welding the gussets on first and see how that comes out. If I can convince myself that it's strong enough, i'll paint them back up and put 'em back in. For the cost of a set of new ones I can buy a *lot* of gas.

 

[JonJay]

Failures still occuring.

You did a very wise thing. However, with no disrespect, I am still surprised buyers are not checking for issued Service Bulletins. I still occasionaly see an accident or incident associated with the rudder pedal gusset issue.
Before I would buy any airplane, I would insure that SB's, AD's, etc... had been taken care of or at least that I was aware of them before I closed the deal. This information is easily available on Van's web site and should be part of any prebuy inspection. Other components, like the engine, can be researched for AD compliance too, again very easily.
Thanks for posting your findings. It might save someone elses butt.

 

[Snowflake]

You did a very wise thing. However, with no disrespect, I am still surprised buyers are not checking for issued Service Bulletins.

You're right, that's exactly what I should have done, and I did miss it. That we found cracks on both the pilot and passenger right-foot pedal suggests that I may not have been far away from an in-service failure. Before I went to look at the plane, I did read through all of the Vans SB's that relate to the RV-6, even the rudder pedal one. Unfortunately, while I looked at almost everything else, the pedals escaped my memory when I was on-site. I don't know why, nor do I know why I had completely forgotten about it until the inspector found it.

On a related note, the newly welded, sanded, primed, basecoated, and finish painted pedals are now dry and ready for installation:

 

[JonJay]

We're human!

You're right, that's exactly what I should have done, and I did miss it. That we found cracks on both the pilot and passenger right-foot pedal suggests that I may not have been far away from an in-service failure. Before I went to look at the plane, I did read through all of the Vans SB's that relate to the RV-6, even the rudder pedal one. Unfortunately, while I looked at almost everything else, the pedals escaped my memory when I was on-site. I don't know why, nor do I know why I had completely forgotten about it until the inspector found it.

On a related note, the newly welded, sanded, primed, basecoated, and finish painted pedals are now dry and ready for installation:

But you cant steal my tag line. I earned it!
New pedals look great.