Bearing Replacement

 

Shown here is one of the six elevator bearings.  A bronze bushing is bonded inside the top structure (the horizontal stab) and the elevator (lower structure) rotates on a steel bushing - all wear occurs on the bushing/bearing surface and none on the bolt.  Most of the bearings in the kitfox are constructed in this manner and many of the bearings were not manufactured to sufficient precision resulting in control friction.  In this picture you can see that when the bolt is torqued to spec, the metal tabs on the elevator push against the ends of the welded bushing housing.
The problem is that the bearing is too short, it needs to fit precisely between the tabs shown so that when the bolt is tightened the tabs will not be bent inward.
First, the steel is turned down to the proper outside diameter.  Next the bolt hole is drilled at one size under and then reamed to the precise inside diameter.  Finally the bearing is cutoff to the exact length for each tab, this takes a few iterations to get the perfect length.  The six elevator bearings are not interchangeable and care must be taken to insure that each goes in its correct bearing.  Replacing all six bearings drastically reduced my elevator control friction.
  I had to replace several other bearings, the trim motor bearing, the trim scissor link bearing, and several others.

 

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