Girl's got back !

Lost steam here for a couple days. Pulled a muscle in my back and that slowed me down. I also started too many things on the fuselage and got a little overwhelmed by how much remains to be completed. Wednesday evening and Thursday morning I helped complete the Don's (pipe) Dream Motor. Here's a shot of what 8K will get you.

Pretty nice . Here's a short video of the start up before the first flight.

I started to complete some of the details on the fuselage. I installed the rudder and rigged the control cables. It's funny how the smallest job can take so much time, for some reason the left front rudder pedal would not return to forward when pulled aft. At first I thought it was just gummy with old grease, so I lubed it, no help.
So I disassembled it and cleaned it all out and regreased, still stiff ? So I took it apart again, put washers in to make the clamps a little larger, still stiff ? After 2 hours I finally notice that the wood floor boards are rubbing on the return spring, apart it comes again, die grinder out the floor board and it works like new.

I did not do that nasty grinding where the engine mount bolt is installed.

 Here it is post modification, works great now.

With that completed I was doing some hanger flying and noticed that the modified rear stick was going to be a problem. The way it is bent aft and lengthened if you have any gut at all, it would get in the way of full aft stick. Scott had an original stick left over from his project. This shot shows them both.

 The bent stick is cool but just not practical.

While I was working on the controls, I installed the neat aileron pulley covers . Unfortunately there was no way to remove the big wood washers . The floor boards are permanently installed.

I also installed the fuel tank and figured out the plumbing and the shut off cable routing.

I worked on fitting the boot cowl a little each day, it's a really big job, especially since the previous mechanic screwed it up. Every hole they drilled (in a brand new Univair cowl) is in the wrong place. It takes extra time to work around their mistakes. It's worth saving though. I still have not figured out how to install the boot cowl with the tank installed. The Univair tank has a longer filler neck and I can't force the cowl over it much less install the sealing grommet. I'll look in my Cub Club news letters for the secret.
Today the weather was beautiful for working outside so I brought the tail home and installed it to check fit.
I needed to make patterns for the tail gap panels that are in really sad shape. This also gave me a chance to fit all the tail bolts and make sure I had not lost any pieces. The new Univair stainless steel brace wires are really sweet. Here are some shots of in together.

With the tail on I could fit the trim panels and mark them for patterns.

My friend Scott stopped by this afternoon and helped me install the brakes. I had decided to just go with these in Alodine and that will be fine for now. I may paint them later. They will work the same either way.
Here they are all rebuilt.

Here they are installed.

I also worked on the brake lines and made the cover plates for the brake line exit from the fuselage, they came out sweet.

  No weekend would be complete without a little paint striping ! So I got these parts ready for paint. I have a plan for the raised lettering on the control wells, I will let you know if it actually works!

I plan to complete the boot cowl this week, if I could just get some help out of this guy.