Throttle quadrant
TLDR
- Built the throttle quadrant
Details
I’m back from a 3 week business trip and wanted to resume the work from something easy. So I picked throttle quadrant as my next project.
I was thinking this should be a 2 hour project, and it turned into 4.5 hours. I am not familiar with the NPT fittings and the brake lines but still not difficult overall.
Nuts and bolts
Putting the rivets, rivnuts, bolts together is easy. I just followed Evan’s video and the KAI as step by step. Then I torqued everything except the throttle cable bolt.
I don’t think I have the cable in the fuselage kit. Maybe it’s in the finishing kit. Not sure.
And I’ve previously painted the top panel white. It looks pretty nice.
Throttle Handle
One complexity is the throttle handle. It has a M4 bolt go through and I need to obviously tighten it. However the hole for the M4 nuts are deep and none of my tools can reach into the hole.
I am currently leaving it aside. Will need to modify my socket to be thinner to torque the bolt here.
Brake lines
The brake handle is connected to a cylinder, which has 4 NPT fittings that connect to brake lines.
The line is fairly rigid. I have not worked with NPT fittings before so definitely a little nervous.
For now, I needed to connect 2 fittings together. I measured the length needed, and cut the brake line to fit. I then used a heat gun to soften the line, and connected to the fitting’s coupling and tightened them.
I hope it doesn’t leak. I tied a balloon on the line and used Snoop to test the fittings. This is the same stuff I used to test fuel tank a few months ago.
For now, this is all I have done for the throttle quadrant. Remaining work: connect the throttle line, connect the rest of brake line.