The Vans battery box instructions include provisions for optional 2″ lightening holes in the box iteself. Since the box is steel, I didn’t want to bother with a hole saw or fly cutter for all 8 of the holes. The better solution was to get some help from Wade, since he has a set of greenlee conduit punches that will make a very near 2″ hole. Since the punch requires a 3/4″ initial hole, i used the unibit to make all 8 of those today.
I also welded the ends onto the next iteration of the elevator trim pushrods. The originals were kinked, and I tried to repair them by splicing in a larger diameter tube in the damaged area. The flaw in this plan was that the larger diameter tube was really hard to bend! So in the third revision, I just made new ones out of the proper tube. I bent them to the specifications in the Beartracks with my imperial tubing bender (see previous entry).
I was able to get the new pushrods welded, prepped, and primed today. While I had all of those tools out, I also did the same to the ELT bracket and fairlead assembly, which until today had remained unprimed.