Fitting the rudder pedals I found to be OK. What I had trouble with was the peripheral parts.
Particularly the pedals stoppers and to a degree the push rods through to the nose wheel.
The Stoppers.
The instructions show four bolts with cup heads that are positioned in the firewall. The pedals impact on the heads of the bolts, which can be adjusted in height, to give the stopper effect.
The pedals I got had two brackets, with a threaded hole, welded on one pedal shaft and a collar around the other pedal shaft. I got no instructions as to what the bracket was for.
I phoned Jabiru and got an answer that was in some ways more confusing than before I phoned. Essentially what they tried to say was that now the stoppers in the firewall are not used. A small cap screw was screwed into each of the brackets and this cap screw is adjusted so it impinged on the collar of the other pedal shaft. This then acted as the travel limiting stopper.
Unfortunately the way they explained it made me think the cap screw should impinge on the firewall and when I installed it it seemed all wrong.
I caused myself lots of difficut extra work because I had not installed the firewall stoppers, and left the final installation of the cap-screw version till very near the end - then that didn't work so I elected to go back to the original firewall stoppers which were then very hard to install with all the other bits and pieces in the way. Then the cup heads that came with the kit were too short. I phoned Jabiru about the fact that the supplied cup heads were too short, and had they shifted the pedal mounts? A somewhat uncertain answer followed and they then sent me the new instructions for mounting the new cap screws in brackets. I suspect they must have changed the positon of the pedal mounts.
Also I had a problem with the new bracket for the cap screws. The bracket is positioned on the pedal shaft so it sits very close to the centre console. On pedal deflection the edge of the bracket scraped against the console. The bolt head holding the nose wheel push-rod is also very close to the other side of the bracket. I could see that if over time any of the bolts or half-moon retaining brackets loosened then the pedals could very easily get jammed and prevent rudder travel.
The old system of pedal stoppers didn't have this risk (and at the time I could not work out what Jabiru actually had in mind with their verbal instructions) so I elected to cut the brackets off anyway and go back to firewall based pedal stoppers. I went to my local hardware shop and bought some longer, same brand cup heads, and installed them, with difficulty.
They sent me the new instructions, but only after I had to phone them to find out what all the new hardwarewas about. All a bit late for me. Again I was really annoyed that they would send me new parts without instructions and old parts with instructions but they no longer fit because of other changes they had made without notification.
The other problem I had was positioning the holes for the push rods through the fire wall for nose wheel. The holes had to be drilled through both the timber and the stainless steel. The stainless steel is quite difficult to cut with a hole cutter because it heats up and tempers. Once it tempers it is very very hard. You need to get a good quality hole cutter with sharp teeth. Once the steel gets a black sheen on it you have tempered it. The secret I later found was to do it in short bursts and stop if it starts to go black.
The holes have to be cut through right next to the two vertical support brackets for the nose wheel assembly. You will find it difficult to work out exactly where the holes have to go because the push rods move cross ways in and out as you move the pedals. I cut a smaller hole initially then had to make it larger after I found the push rods jammed on the inner side of the hole. Increasing the size of the holes was a real difficult task because the hole cutter relied on having only a small hole to keep centred. I found I had to find the pieces I initially cut out, epoxy them back in place and then recut the holes. All a very difficult task.
