For all of you who have built a Sig Somethin' Extra, how good are the pushrods? I'm not sure about using them so what should i replace them with?

Good Question! I need the answer to this also!!

swager,

i went ahead and got some great planes 36" metal pushrods. i also looked at sullivan gold-n-rods with the steel pushrod, but GP's was a little bit thicker. you would want to use something like this so if you put a lot of throw, it won't bend and denature the nylon which would cause the airplane to crash.

if your SE is the kit version (the only one I own), the stock pushrods are just fine in my opinion

The stock pushrods are fine, but I'm not a big fan of regular plastic pushrods, because they do change length slightly depending on the weather, and will change your trim a little. On my SE, I switched to Sullivan black composite pushrods. They have several different varieties of size and length. The 2-56 X 36 is a direct replacement for what Sig provides in the kit. I have several hundred flights on my SE (at least) and haven't noticed any trim changes using these pushrods.

well I duno what are the temperature gradients in your country, but in mine you need to be a TOC champion to feel the trim change due to pushrod dilatation

i bought the kit version, but i just purchased it today so it should be an easy retro fit. i probably would have just used the supplied pushrods but some people told me to replace them. plus it only cost $5 to replace them so why not. i bought the kit because it's a fast build and i've been doing too much ARFing lately.

Well I must be a TOC level pilot because I could sure tell the trim changes from morning to afternoon. Here in SoCal 20 degrees from morning to mid-afternoon is common and I'd be retrimming on almost every flight.

I'd get the Sullivan carbon pushrods, not metal ones. The Sullivans will fit the stock sleeves and not change with temperature. While your at it get taller mains from TNT and swing a big prop with low pitch, it's what this design calls for to fly as advertised.

Having built two from kits and flown them over a hundred times I know this plane pretty well.

Hi,

I believe that the rods in the SIG SE KIT are the same ones that are used on the SIG Kadet LT40 kit. They looked the same to me, so when building my SE I changed them out for some sullivan rods. Like BasinBum stated I to have seen a noticable difference just between first thing in the morning to about noon time with the nyrod tubes on my Kadet. Mine changed so severly that I had to make a physical adjustment to the threaded clevis' since the trim tabs on the radio could not even correct the shift fully.
If your building the kit version, it is easy enough and not too expensive to just replace them with either all metal rods, or even sullivan rods which do not seem to move with temperature changes. My SE is flying great with the Sullivan 505's I believe (Blue outer tube, with Yellow inner tube). Just make sure you don't leave more than the 1" of inner tube outside the outer tube as explained in the instructions. It was either my SE or my Skybolt I had a longer span from where the blue outer tube exited the plane and where the control horns were located, so I used a longer piece of threaded rod inserted in the yellow tube to give the rod more support. It's working fine.