Pedals Re-Installed

After coming home from work I felt like cleaning up the left-overs from yesterday. The pedals had to go back in and it felt like a good task to do for an evening worth of work. I had never done it the "right" way, while the fuselage was on its belly, so it was a learning curve for me to overcome. It turned out that it was easier than putting them in while the fuse was on its side.


Here the left and the middle upper blocks go in with the left pedals. This is just to get the thing set up and stabilized. It has to come half-way out again to insert the right pedals in the bearing blocks - which you see in the following picture.


Fiddling with the lower blocks and the bolts was a job where I wished I could be hanging upside down from the ceiling as access would have been much easier. My calves and back muscles will certainly be sore tomorrow.
Notice the helpful bungee cord to position the pedals in their aft-most position. Really handy when you don't have access to a second pair of hands.


The final step was to re-attach the hydraulic lines - mainly to cover up the holes Arizonan insects love to nest in. I was tired at that point and just hand tightened them. I also re-attached the rudder cables which simple, except for inserting the cotter pins. You just need two hands for that job and getting two arms under the instrument panel while being half-way outside the airplane is not really easy to do.
This repair, which I'm not certain is complete yet, has taken me 5.5 hours so far. Not bad at all; I really don't understand why I was dreading it so much. I guess, it was more a psychological block than being put off by the time it would take.


Now, I have to tighten those line fittings and then do some magic with cable ties that I had to cut in order to remove the pedals. That should not take too long and then I'm off to bleeding the brakes again and see if this all was worth the effort.
After considering the next steps on my day off (from the shop), I decided to leave the cable ties where they are - in the bag - at least for now. I will tighten the line fittings and then go straight to filling the system with brake fluid and bleeding. That way, I can see if this effort fixed the problem before I put obstacles in the way again.
Actually, it might take a few days for the leaks to show if there are any. I remember that last time when that happened, it first appeared to be dry and it was only after a few days when the leaks showed.