I finished fabricating the rudder pedal links and then powder coated them matte black.  Here they are in my small toaster oven curing.

Finally, I installed these for good and cotter-pinned them.  I didn’t get a picture of it, but I also reinstalled the cotter pins in the top mounting bolts of the brake master cylinders and tightened the jam nuts.

Here’s the right side.  I tightened the rear bolt tight enough that the links won’t pivot relative to the cable fitting, so the only pivot point is at the rudder pedals.  Otherwise, the weight of the links and bolt would cause the aft joint to sag which would make it more likely to catch on something.  This way, it’s essentially just an extension of the cable fitting.

Before wrapping up for the evening, I installed the adel clamps that anchor the fuel tank vent lines to the bracket that ties the firewall angle to the longerons.  You can see the adel clamp in the lower left corner of this picture.  Getting these on was more of a pain than I expected.  I had to remove almost all of the padding on the footwell floor and lay across the spar on my back with my head pressed into the rudder pedals.  It took me nearly 30 minutes to install these two screws!

My buddy Andre stopped by this morning and helped me finish riveting the final skin on the aircraft.  I had left the edge of this skin unriveted so that I could easily get the canopy pins in and out during the final canopy fitting, but that’s done now.

I adjusted the brake master cylinders as far as they will go, but it wasn’t enough to prevent inadvertent brake activation.  I had another problem too that I didn’t realize last night.  With either of the rudder pedals all the way forward, the inner pedals hit the center heat box.  They don’t hit it square but instead rub along the side.  That’s clearly unacceptable, so I decided to fabricate shorter links.

I took 1 3/8″ out of each link which pulls the pedals back just far enough that they don’t contact the heat box.  This helped with the brake geometry as well since the rudder pedals are more tipped back (relative to my feet) with the shorter links.  I spent some time in the plane after making this change and I think this will work well.  Ignore the fact that there is only one link here.  There will be one on each side of the weldment flange and cable fitting to avoid introducing twisting forces into either one, but I just fabricated on per side for the trial fitting.