Brief Description: Set & Drilled Landing Gear Legs & Mounts
With the help of Kip Laurie, I set the toe-in for the wheels and drilled the gear mount. This was done using Kip's method instead of the factory method. It required constructing channels for each wheel made from 2x4s. The wheels were then set in the channels (see pic 2).
The channels were squared up with the fuselage by puttting a reference centerline of the fuselage on the floor and measuring against it. The tow in was set my measuring the appropriate deflection of the channels at known points (0.44" at three feet from the axles), then using light mallet taps to move the channels.
The mounts were then drilled using a 1/8" drill, and progressively updrilled to the required 1/4" for the AN4 bolts. Drilling the titanium legs inside the fuselage was very difficult, and required a lot of pressure on the drill to make any progress. I was sore for days after doing this!
We had a false start because after measuring the first time, we determined that the gear legs were too short per the plans, so we pulled them and added wood shims inside the gear mounts to get the legs to the right lengths. These shims will be removed when the gear legs are pulled during wing rigging.
It's hard to know if the toe-in is correct; I'll just have to wait until taxi testing at least, and may not know for sure until a number of flying hours have passed to observe tire wear.
