Coming back to the rudder pedals, I had the blocks built so I went ahead and installed them. Turned out neither pair of pedals could move at all once I got them bolted in, so I had some tweaking to do. I remembered that I was supposed to sand the powdercoating off the pedal tubes where they met the blocks, so I did that, but they were still way too tight. The tubes measured about 1.002" in diameter, but the holes from my 1" forstner bit were only about 0.980". I needed to enlarge the holes for it to work.
My solution was to pick up this thing from AutoZone:
I bolted the mounting blocks together, put them in the vice, and went to town on each hole with this little honing tool. I gave it about 15 seconds on each hole, then measured the diameter. It took probably a cumulative 5 minutes of sanding per hole, but once I got them enlarged to about 1.005" the fit seemed pretty good. This would have taken hours to do by hand! Finally, I used my edge deburring too to put a big chamfer on the holes that needed clearance for the welds on the pedal assemblies.
Anyway, with the blocks modified, I lubricated everything with white lithium grease and managed to get the pedals installed. It required three hands to get everything in place and bolted, but I got it done with only two hands and some mild cursing. They're finally in and able to move freely!
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