250 – Frustrations with Piper Rudder Cable Tension

If you look closely in the photo above, you can see my friend Chris, smiling.

It was the day he arrived at Classic Aviation (KSHD) to begin his annual inspection with me.

Chris is not only an airplane owner and pilot, but he’s also a certified airplane mechanic as well.

I was very happy to have him help with the process as much as possible.

As I worked through the inspection, I found the control cable tensions needed some adjustment, including the rudder cable tensions.

As I began to tighten the left and right rudder cable tensions evenly so as not to disturb the rigging, I encountered a problem.

The left cable turnbuckle bottomed out in the turnbuckle barrel, and there was no more ability to tighten the cable, but I had not yet reached the cable tension spec in the maintenance manual of 85 pounds, plus or minus 5.

Yes, this is a high tension, but it is what the manual says.

You can listen to the audio for details of how we resolved the issue, and how I got help from my friend Kenneth who previously worked at Classic Aviation.

The short story is that we went through extensive rigging of the nose gear steering system, the rudder pedal bars, and the rudder cables, and finally got things set, with 80 pounds on the rudder cables.

When the annual was completed, we had fixed a bunch of other items as well, and hopefully Chris will be good to go for another year with no maintenance interruptions, as much as possible.

He even sent me some photos of the day he flew his sons down to the Outer Banks of North Carolina and visited the Wright Brothers Memorial! Thanks Chris!

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