I balance controls all the time. . What we do when we get one out of balance. . We do it again tomorrow. Most of the time we had done something wrong.. measured down to the table with the wrong number after subtracting out the knife edge height. . Having the mandrel not at 90 to the hinge line, mandrel set too far off the hinge line.. and a new day makes it better. .

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The ailerons are definitely off the airplane. Added additional (smarter) heads today and we collectively weighed the trailing edge. Same results more or less.
After lots of very careful measurement, discussion and judicious use of a level and measuring tape we ended up with one aileron at 8.25" pounds with an 8.47" pound limit and the second aileron is in the process of being stripped again, argh.
Round two will be with VERY reduced primer in the same color as the finish coat and a super light single pass finish coat. Sheesh, I get the $20,000 price tag for a paint job now.
Thanks for your input all.

I looked up aileron balancing in my Cessna series 100 service manual.
Maybe I'm just dumb but I found it hard to figure out the procedure.
If your aileron is that far out, no offense but I'd be inclined to suspect that you're doing it wrong.

The Cessna book is a little weird to follow. I hooked up with the supervising A&P yesterday and we checked them again by weighing the trailing edge, a method he has quite a bit of experience with. That method came out basically the same place. I did remove the paint from the one that was out and after multiple careful checks of the methodology. It ended up about with the balance point at 7" instead of the 9.5" that the paint was pushing it to. I will report on what the Repaint turns up. The other one is sitting there all nice glossy and green and within tolerances.

FZ, how about posting a photo of your 180's new paint job when she's all ready for pubic viewing?
Ditto 54c180.

I had to have one of my Cessna 170 ailerons re-skinned a couple years ago, and then painted to match the airplane. It was waaaaaay out of balance, and we had to add quite a bit of lead to get it to balance. Doesn't take much paint to really throw the balance off.....which of course is why the FAA requires you to rebalance the control surfaces after paint.

We were able to get that aileron into limits, even pulled the other aileron off, and it was good.

Good luck.

MTV

Will definitely inundate everybody with pics when it's done. it's an entire end to end in and out deal so it's pretty extensive. I would add pics of balancing the ailerons but between my lack of skills, lack of time and wonky computers it's not working out too good.
The re-stripped and re-painted aileron turned out very good on the balance. I super reduced both the epoxy primer and the finish paint and just spent a lot of time being really careful to limit what went on and then used a lot of straight reducer to get everything to flow and be glossy. Even though the first aileron was within limits, I think I'm going to strip and redo it as well. It ended pretty close to the 8.47" limit and I'd rather have a little more cushion, flutter scares the hell out of me.

I was just now remembering that Karl Anderson lives pretty close to you, and since rebuilding control surfaces is his specialty he probably has a lot of experience rebalancing them.

My paint project is advancing ok ...
I appreciate the input from you BCP folk.

I went with the Endura Matterhorn White for base coat. The C-180 is all pretty much white now, just a few pieces left. I went with 4 gallons of "A" and 4 gallons of "B", it looks like I will have a gallon of each left over. Enough to paint the floats I guess.

The only problem has been painting the Selkirk fibreglass cowlings. Some form of "solvent pop" emerged on both attempts to paint the cowls.
The application goes ok, but about 3 hours after spraying, pin type roughness forms over much of the top and bottom cowl areas. Suggestions welcome.

The recent "Flying Zebra" comments and struggles with aileron balancing had me concerned, so today I went ahead and checked the balance of all my newly painted flight controls. Everything came in on spec ok. I referred to the Cessna SNL 86-44 publication which had some diagrams which helped.

Reassembly of the tail comes next, then some yellow and black lines.
Still, not sure what to do about the cowling paint problem ...

I just painted my cowling after adding the Selkirk nose bowl. It came out fine but, because it was molded fiberglass, I first scrubbed it thoroughly with wax and silicone remover. Everything is epoxy primered too. Not sure if that helps.
All of the other flight controls balanced fine as did the ailerons, after being stripped again and painted much lighter on the primer.