The purpose of this post is twofold: to document that I have performed this Service Bulletin and to prove to my friends following this blog that I'm still alive and still working on the airplane. The Service Bulletin was brought about by a fatal accident involving an RV-12 which resulted from improper installation of the rod ends on the aileron push tubes. Over 600 RV-12s are flying so I guess over 599 builders did it right, but Van's says that "out of an abundance of caution" (seems like I heard that phrase a few thousand times back in 2020) the SB was necessary.
The diagram on the left shows the proper installation and the pic at right shows the improper installation on the accident airplane. What I don't understand is this: In the accident airplane, the stick on the right was functioning. It's not much of a reach to put your hand on it from the pilot's seat.
To verify that did it correctly I snaked my borescope in through the cutout for the right stick and took a pic.
The alternative to this is to remove the floor pan, an odious task which involves removing hundreds of Phillips-head machine screws, half of which have the heads boogered up (that's the official machine-shop term) from five or six previous removals.
Back in 1948, Edward Murphy said "If a thing can be done two ways, one of which results in disaster, someone will eventually do it that way."
Off Topic:
I'm getting ready to move my antique car from North Carolina to Colorado, causing me to look longingly at some pics of it. What you see is an example of what can happen when your engineering students have too much access to your car. It can grow teeth.
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