My friend and I ordered two excellerons together, and I built mine first, when he was building his I noticed the control horn hardware of his plane was slightly different than mine, actually when we were testing the surface we noticed a bit of 'give' of the elevator under load. On closer inspection I saw that there was a lot less plastic material holding the screw of the control horn on all his hardware than in mine. The base of the plastic thingy on mine had a lot of more material holding the screw and was a lot stiffer than his. GDAVIS on your 3rd picture I noticed that you used the stock hardware for the elevator surfaces, and it is the same as my friend's, the skinny ones, try pulling the screw with your finger and see how much force it needs before the plastic starts to flex, I bet that it will flex with relatively small force.
I am not close to my plane or his to get some comparison pictures, but I'll try to get them so you can see the difference.
My friend has flown his plane like that a couple of times, so maybe it is no big deal, but just wanted everyone to know.


Gabriel