Loose aileron hinges PAU 36% Edge

[Nogyro]

Guys,

I've got about 140 flights on my 36% Edge/DA100 combo, and I can't say enough about it. What a blast to fly. My problem is on the right aileron, the inside two hinges have wormed out the holes in the aileron...... The outer one is starting to come loose as well. All linkages were set up properly when I assembled it. Using stock gear, Hitec 5955 TG's for servos, SWB 1 1/4" servo arms. Hinge surfaces is sealed. It's been my experience that the right side of the airframe always seem to take a beating from the vibration from our gassers..... The brass control arm is also worn where it screws onto the bolt, and a bit of play on the little screw that connects the "clevis" to the horn. I almost replaced them right off the bat with the Dubro's, but thought I would give them a shot. I've put 600 flights on the Dubro's and never a problem.

My question is what is the best way to repair this. As of right now, I'm leaning towards cutting all the old ones in half, and rehinging with Dubro 1/4 scale pinned hinges. I'm not sure if there is enough meat in the aileron to use Robart Hinge Points. You can see inside the wing where they added a doubler where the hinge point comes through the trailing edge of the wing..... Or I could just shoot some expandable polyurethane glue in the enlarged hole and see if that holds.....

[MrKiwi]

Put some oil on the knuckle of the hinge, and use a syringe to maybe inject some gorilla glue into the hole. Good luck!

[SleepyC]

I would take the aileron off the wing, cut the old hinges.
Sharpen a brass tube and bore out the hinges in the wing.
Glue in a new hard wood dowel into each hole, re-drill and insert new robart hinges.

Simple as 123.

[Dan767]

	Quote: Originally Posted by SleepyC
	I would take the aileron off the wing, cut the old hinges. Sharpen a brass tube and bore out the hinges in the wing. Glue in a new hard wood dowel into each hole, re-drill and insert new robart hinges. Simple as 123.

What he said.

[Nogyro]

I could take the easy way out and use the syringe & gorrilla glue, but I'm afraid the rest of the hinges may do the same thing over time. I had forgotten about the brass tube & dowel method. Thanks...... This is one reason I prefer to hinge my own control surfaces. You just don't know what kind of job they did at the factory.

Hopefully someone from PAU will jump in here and shed some light on how much wood is on the leading edge of the aileron.

Thanks guys,

[Tired Old Man]

If their manufacturing process is like most, the answer is not much....

[plaster93]

It doesn't look that bad, I would oil the knuckle and reglue and inject some gorilla glue in hole. Just make sure to try and inject a little water first to activate the glue and it'll expand all around the pin. And just watch it every other flight to make sure its OK.

[sweetpea]

	Quote: Originally Posted by Tired Old Man
	If their manufacturing process is like most, the answer is not much....

This is where you are wrong.

Just give them a call. PAU has some excellent service and will answer your questions.


As for me. I'd just inject some glue in the loose ones. You'll be back in the air in 1 day

[Nogyro]

Well I got the hinge fixed on the Edge. I opted for injecting Gorilla glue in the two loose hinges I had. It was too easy of a fix not to try first. You never know, it may last as long as the plane does. If not, I'll cut them out and start over. I for sure will keep a very close eye on them.

Before I made the repair though, I couldn't help but think there might be an underlying problem that caused the hinge hole to wallow out like that. As it turned out, I believe my aileron has a slight twist in it, and when it was hinged at the factory, it wasn't properly aligned. The beveled edges were overlapped a tad instead of being even. I was able to even them out, plus put just a whisker of hinge gap in there when I glued it back up. We'll see.......

When I replaced the metal control horns with the Dubro type in my picture, that made my H9 titanium push rods too long by a 1/4" or so. I removed the servos and rotated them 180 degrees and that moved the output shaft enough for them to work. I went ahead and replaced the control arms on the other wing as well. I then reprogrammed the servos, and all it well. Hope to try it out in the next day or two........

[Tired Old Man]

By not much I meant that the hinge holes in many arfs frequently are not closed off on the inside end. Frequently the hinges pass through the wing trailing edge and then into a square balsa block attached to the inside of the tailing edge. Typically this block is a square piece of balsa about 1/4" or so thick. Without tearing apart a PAU wings I could not say if this is true of theirs or not.

[MikeC3D]

I would go ahead and inject gorilla glue in all of the hinges as a precaution....JMO
Manuf. use the same white glue on the hinges as the rest of the build, and we all know how these joints pop loose occasionaly,I personally would never trust pre-installed hinges on any arf. Again JMO...We use gorilla glue on all of our planes and never had a problem with one coming out, for example...I smacked the rudder hard on a 35% QQ yak, smashed the bottom of rudder and broke all of the stock hinges in one way or another, but the part inside the surfaces remained, it made it a small PITA to repair.

[JoeAirPort]

I just had this happen on my PAU 30% Edge after 3 years of flying. Only one hinge came loose and the reason why is because the hard point was not where the hinge hole was drilled (drilled at the factory). I drilled small holes all around the hing point and injected Gorilla Glue. Worked awesome. You're right that misallignments can cause hinge points to loosen up. The gorilla fix should be done first unless they are all loose.

[Nogyro]

I've put maybe 5 gallons of gas thru my PAU Edge since using the Gorilla glue for the repair. Still tight as a drum..... I also smacked my rudder the other day real good (don't ask how) I crunched it pretty good, broke the pin out of the lower hinge and snapped an ear off the hinge as well. I had glued the rudder in with Gorilla glue, and the hinge points never budged! For the repair, I was able to push the rudder all the way to one side and slot the fuse and rudder right above the broken hinge, and install a Dubro HD pinned hinge. Sure beat cutting all the other ones off and starting over. I'll get some pics downloaded on the pc and post them....

[JoeAirPort]

Looks great. I did a similar repair recently to a counter balance ripped off my EF Extra. Dead sticked down wind into the weeds and pulled it right off. Working with balsa and CA is pretty nice.

[Dan767]

You hit it on the garage door.