Installing Pushrods And Bellcrank

Long busy day. Started off with a thorough cleaning of the fuselage interior prior to installing the elevator pushrods. I'd vacuumed it once prior to painting but sanding all the primer, bugs and other debris have caused a lot of dirt buildup since then. Better to clean it now before the pushrods go in. I'd bought some mini vacuum attachments off Amazon to help me better get into all the nooks and crannies. A lot of compressed air was used to blow hard to reach dirt where I could get to it. After that I spent a long time adjusting the control column pitch friction forces. Van's guidance is vague in this regard. There are multiple washers and shims that are used under the two bearing bolts to get the tolerances right. Adjusting these washers to make changes was a bitch. The column rotated nicely with the bolts cinched down but not torqued. When torqued to spec friction forces went up significantly. I spent hours adjusting it trying to find a sweet spot. in the end lower then standard torque seemed to yield an acceptable result but I'm unclear if this will work. Nonstandard torques are used on many bolts throughout the plane to enable freedom of movement such as the rudder pedals and aileron torque tubes. I'm just very unclear on how much friction in the control column is acceptable. I've got an email in to Van's tech support for clarification. From there it was on to installing the forward and center elevator pushrods along with the aft bellcrank. This required finesse manipulating bolts, washers and nuts for the rod ends in tight confines while working alone. Profanity was used liberally for that dealing with multiple, hard to insert washers that go in between the rod end bearings and mounting brackets. It took awhile but I got it done.