Got a Sig Sundancer, 50cc. The previous owner went with the manual's suggested build. Among quite a few things that I definitely would not do are the suggested clevices. Some people are fine with this, but for my flight style and comfort level, I choose not. That being said, I'm not sure if someone was under the influence of something or dozing off at the factory, but for some reason the specified measurements for the included elevator push-rods are WAY off. Actually it's only the left elevator rod, which, in the manual is supposed to be 5.5" long. It actually is that length, but the problem is that the tail is thin enough that it doesn't allow enough room for the elevator servos to be directly across from each other so they staggered the cuts. This is referenced in the manual, but the cut for the left elevator half servo on my bird is way forward of where it should be. Long story short, in order for this to work, I would need a push-rod that is at least 7 inches long. 4-40. The previous owner had a push-rod on there which was 5+ inches long, barely had the ends screwed in, and was using clevices. Can't believe he flew it that way, seriously, I'm talking maybe 1/4" thread into each clevice. I'm changing all that to ball links, and heavier duty control arms.

My problem is that I can't find any threaded push-rods (preferably turnbuckles) that are more than 5 or 5.5" long. Sure I can easily find them threaded on one end, and they are 12 inches or more. But I don't know of any ball links that I can solder onto the end of the rod. I need this to be solid obviously, and the only thing I've been able to come up with is a z-bend in a 4-40 rod threaded at one end. I'm sure this will be fine for a while until the hole on the z-bend end starts to enlarge, then I'll have to replace the arm. That's fine, but I kinda like the set-it-and-forget-it of ball links. Plus, and most importantly, since I'm dealing with the extreme tail area of the plane, I want to do as little weight adding as possible. The only other thing I can think of is cutting threads into the smooth end of a 7" one-end-threaded 4-40 rod, but before I try my hand at that and go thru god-knows-how-many rods until I get it right, I'm wondering if anyone else has had this situation, and what if any solutions worked. I'm sure I'm missing something...

Any ideas?
Thanks in advance!

I suggest that you use the single thread end push rod, cut it to length, and solder on one of these. TowerHobbies.com | Dubro Threaded Coupler 4-40 (2)

I agree with Tom C. The store bought 4-40 rods actually have rolled threads on them and the rods are actually undersized so you won't be able to thread the other end with a 4-40 die. So short of using the mentioned solder on threaded adapters the only other thing would be full threaded rod.

Suburban95

JEEZ, I can't believe I didn't think of that, as many as I've done like that. And I actually have a few of those. And you'd think I'd remember when I mentioned soldering on ball links. Guess that's what I get for working on this plane at 3 in the morning after working all day.

Thanx for the reminder guys!