I figured I'd start with small, simple parts like the rudder pedals and brake pedals. The little pile of parts you see below are the parts for the two brake pedals. The little tubes are 3/8". It was tough not to burn away the edges on those and the plates, but the results weren't too bad. The short (1") lengths of 7/8" tubing ended up slightly out of alignment with the rest of the brake pedal due to normal movement from welding. That's something I'm going to need to learn to deal with, although I don't think it's going to be a problem for the brake pedals. They're pretty close.
What you don't see in these photos is the struggle I went through to get the brake pedals to fit onto the rudder pedals. I bought a 3/4" reamer from Grizzly thinking that I'd ream out the brake pedals and they'd slide beautifully onto the rudder pedals. Well, I was in for a rude awakening.
Even after reaming, they wouldn't even start on. So, I chucked up a rudder pedal in my lathe and ran some sand paper in the inside by hand. That wasn't removing material fast enough, so I got out my Dremel. With the part spinning in the lathe and a light touch with the Dremel, I thought it would work out well. With one of the brake pedals, I went a little bit too far. The fit was loose, so I thought I'd have to cut off the 7/8" piece and weld a new one on.
The other one wasn't quite big enough, and I got it stuck on the rudder pedal. It was probably a little bigger due to heat and after I got it onto the rudder pedal a little bit, it cooled down. Well, it wasn't on there very far, but it was really stuck. I put another short (maybe 3") piece of 3/4" in through the other end of the brake pedal pivot tube to try and tap out the rudder pedal from inside the brake pedal, but then I had three stuck pieces! And when I say stuck, I really mean stuck!
Freezing, heat, brute force, I tried it all. One thing I learned from this is that this steel is tough! So, after hammering and wiggling and swearing, I finally got them all apart.
I put the brake pedal back in the lathe and did a little more work with the Dremel. I also used a lot of elbow grease and smoothed out the rudder pedal tube onto which the brake pedal goes using sand paper. Long story short, I have a slightly looser fit than I would like, but I kept getting gouging when I would slide the parts together and this seems like the best way to go. I plan on putting grease in between the two, and a little bit of space will give some room for the grease.
I still have a little more work to do on the pedals, but just wanted to give you an update and let you know that I'm making some progress.
