The center bearing hole in the elevator horns was already drilled by the previous builder on these, so when I was doing the temporary fit for trimming the 603PP spar flange and the h/s skins for counterweight horn interference, my assembly process was to stick a bolt through the center bearing, slide the elevator inbd onto the bolt, and use that pivot as a 3rd hand while I got the center and outer Heim joints lined up and rig pins installed.

On the left elevator, everything slipped together no problem, but on the right, you had to wiggle that last (middle) rig pin a bit to get it installed. I started thinking about this after my last log entry so I went back and revisited it yesterday. After a few minutes of staring at it, measuring & whatnot, it became obvious what was going on; Either the other guys mis-drilled the hole originally, or I had an unfortunate tolerance buildup when I rebuilt the H/S. Whatever the case, the bolt hole in the R/H elevator horn is off by about 3/64". I didn't notice this at first because I pinned that end, then the tip. The last thing to go together was the middle heim and there's enough flex in the elevator that you can get the pins in even with a slight mis-alignment.

Unfortunately, this isn't a case of mis-adjusted heim joints. The hole is fine fore/aft, and all of the skin lines & other dimensional measurements are spot on. The hole is just off vertically by about 20% of its total diameter. This is a little frustrating. I can push the control horn down with my thumb and easily get it to flex enough to get the bolt to slide home, but It's not right, and I think at the very least, it would probably cause either the center bearing or the r/h middle heim joint to wear prematurely.

I emailed van's just to make sure I wasn't being overly picky, and the response from Sterling Langrell was short & to the point;

"Have this hole welded closed and drill it properly. If you force the bolt in you will have nothing but trouble latter down the road and possible cracked spars."

Sigh. Hopefully I've got an easy fix. The guy who blows out our sprinkler system every fall does that as a side gig. His actual job is a welding inspector at a big facility here in Wichita. I called him yesterday to see if he though he'd be able to hook me up and he said no problem. He's got a TIG/MIG setup in his garage. I'm headed over there this afternoon to see if we can get this fixed.