"shimming the drag link" -- I had to carefully file my drag link so that it would fit in between the tabs in the first place!  Maybe mine is installed ever-so-slightly crooked.  I only took off a few thousandths but that was required for a friction-free rotation.

Scott -- when I presented aluminum hardware to NASA for flying on the Space Shuttle in the mid 1980's, they made me remove all of the coarse-threaded bolts and replace them with fine-threaded bolts using helicoils.  Now if you ask me, NASA ain't had no rocket scientists for a long time now (OK,OK, Mike Reinath and Valin Thorn and any other NASA Lancair builders are notable exceptions) but maybe they know something about this that I don't.  So fine-threaded bolts in helicoiled aluminum do not worry me.  However, I would be concerned about only having 1/8 inch of material around the hole.  Standard engineering formulas often assume material properties for holes in a semi-infinite sheet -- having such a small edge distance means you have to analyze it differently.  However, the primary load here is in compression, not tension, so I don't think the rod end will pull out of the hole.

- Rob Wolf
jaded ex-rocket scientist