36-14: Sticks hitting the panel - resolved

I was aware of builders having issues with the Tosten grips hitting the panel when used with the stock Van's control sticks. So when i ordered my grips, i also ordered the pre-wired sticks which came with them. It turns out that these sticks are identical to the Van's sticks, and even after the elevator stops were adjusted, the grips are still hitting the panel face, and the lower switches. 

One solution is the Angled Bushings which are sold by Tosten. These were eventually purchased, but i found a couple of issues. Firstly, the original sticks had the grub screw hole on the forward side of the stick. The angled bushing has the hole on the aft side. I asked about this on the forums (in case i was missing something) and the concensus was to just drill a new hole in the aft side of the stick

The bushings give a 17 degree angle to the grips

With the hole in the bushing aligned with the hole in the stick, the bushing is angled in the wrong direction. A new hole is needed in the aft side of the stick.

The second issue is that the bushings don't push down completely into the sticks, as the bend begins so close to the top of the stick. The solution here was to just file off the internal corners of the bushings until they fit. 

You can see how the stick bend begins before the bushing is fully seated. This requied the internal corners of the bushing to be filed back.

Once the bushing was in place, i was able to test the sticks - alas! the grips no longer hit the panel, but still hit all the switches. It looked as though i needed to remove at least an inch of length from the stick. However, this would not be possible due to how close the bends were to the bushings. 

The angled bushing did not do the job.

The new hole in the stick allowed the bushing to be in the correct direction.

The stick could not be shortened anymore, as the bushings would not fit without signficant modification.

So the only option left was to have the sticks bend a little more aft. To do this, i worked out that the grips needed to be moved aft by about 1". I placed the stick on a piece of cardboard, and traced around it. I then angled the stick backwards, rotating around where the existing bend was, and worked out we needed approx 6 degrees of additional bend. I took the sticks to a local manufacturing company who bent them for me on a hydraulic bender for the princely sum of a slab of beer. The bending ruined the powder coating, so i sanded all that off and had them re-powdercoated.

Removing the powdercoat was fun! (not)

Ready to be re-done, along with some wheel pant brackets.

Much nicer!

This shows the adjsuted bend of the sticks, versus the original stock Van's sticks. The lower bend was increased by approx 6 degrees.

The original Van's sticks on the cardboard bending template.

The sticks after bending an additional 6 degrees. This moved the top forward face of the grips aft by about 1". 

The grips are held in with a 10-32 socket head screw, and a jam nut, which i have since replaced with a matching black oxide nut. 

The sticks now clear the panel!

I added a new bushing to the bottom of the sticks where the wires come out.