Thanks for the welcome and for the offer to see your aircraft!  I work near Tipton and saw the news coverage about the accident.  I hope your friend Tom recovers quickly and gets back in the air.  Time to get changed out of my suit, drive to my brother's home and get to work on finishing the slats!

 - Bill

Hi Jim, 

The centre rod preloads the spring. You can use it to take all of the pressure off the v-block. Without the centre rod, you can still adjust the preload with the outside rods, but by adding preload here, you are loading the v-block and making the rudder stiffer. (With less preload, the nose gear will compress more under the load of the aircraft) In our case, there is less load on the block now than when we had the bungee cord, so the rudder is lighter than it was, but not a free as it is when you can take all the load off. 

You still have the option of using flat blocks to lighten the rudder, but I don't think it is necessary.

I think that the headers of the 912 give off a lot of heat, which shortens the life of the elastic bungee. We replaced two this year. 

I apologize for not replying to your question about the Dynon autopilot.  I broke my back a few years ago and haven't been back here in a very long time.  The answer is unfortunately no, I didn't the autopilot installed.  I'm hoping to be able to resume activity in the next year or so.  Progress has been slow going.  But we just bought land in an airpark in Tennessee, so I'll have a new hangar to occupy in the next couple of years.  Assuming my healing progress continues in a positive direction that'll get my build going again.  Truth be told though, there was a whole lot of procrastinating going on even before I broke my back.  But my wife has threatened to kill me if I don't do something when the new house and hangar get built, so there's no better incentive.  Thank God for her!