Ok, I hope this isn't too dumb of a question: I'm assembling a 4* 40 arf, and when I inserted the metal tab that holds the tailwheel (stock hardware) into the fuse, it didn't quite go in all the way it seems. Now, when trying to attach the rudder to the vertical stab, to keep it even up and down the rudder will be about 1/8" from the stab (the bottom of the rudder is slotted a little bit to fit over the end of the metal tab mentioned above and a section of the tailwheel wire bends to horizontal to fit into a pre-drilled hole in the rudder). I'm guessing this much space between the stab and rudder might cause an issue. I'm trying to trim some of the bottom of the rudder to allow some more room and this is about as close as I've gotten it (gained a little ground). Wanted to see if any of you more experienced guys could offer up some advice if I've explained it well enough.

Thanks in advance

What did you glue the metal tab with? I have a Four Star and I did it with 15min epoxy. If you used epoxy, you can use a heat gun to unset the epoxy and remove the whole thing to set it right. I've done this with even more complex set ups. I once had to detach a whole stab that ended up crooked on a kit and it worked perfectly. If you can carefully peel the covering from the bottom part of the fuse, just 2" or so, so the heat won't damage the covering, you'll be able to fix it with no apparent marks. Make sure that you thoroughly remove all the glue from the previous attempt before you do it again because when using this method, epoxy tends to get brittle and it could cause a failure in the future.

You can melt the cured epoxie? learn something new all the time I guess. As for the taildragger, I replaced i't with a sulavan taildragger set up,way nicer and cheap.

Take a dremel tool and cut off that wire as close as you can to the rudder and forget about this tail wheel. It will likely break out of your rudder some day on a less than perfect landing. Get a Sullivan tail wheel that mounts to the bottom of the fuse and uses a spring wire in the bottom of the rudder for direction control.

Sullivan tail wheel: http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin...&I=LXFV47&P=ML

EDIT:// What part of NC are you in? I am near Fayetteville.

Thanks for the advice guys. You know...i was close to srapping the stock tail wheel and going the sullivan route, but it was like 11:30 the other night, and I said screw it. That's what I get i guess. I'm in the Colfax area Mr67Stang, but learning to fly at a field in Winston Salem.

I havn't use a steerable tail wheel in so long, I forgot how the plane handled with one. I simply got used to using the rudder to steer the plane on the ground and just skipped the part of the wheel assembly that attaches to the rudder. And, I've had no problems at all with steering the plane on taxi, take off, or landing.

CGr

I think the important thing is, whatever you do, don't leave that wide gap between the rudder and the fin. I had a similar issue with my 4* and managed to get the supplied wheel assembly out, recut the groove, and reinstalled it. I never had a problem with it and saw no reason not to use it