Well, its been a hectic month with the wife's recovery from surgery, Christmas and New Years. Progress has been slow but fruitful. Lots of planning and re planning. With so many required changes to the gear set up and brakes not a lot has been done until today.
The original gear set up was not what I would call safe. If you look at the pictures closely you will notice that the gear set up from the factory would end up pre-loading the wheel and hub assembly with too much stress right at the attachment of the hub as designed. The use of the spacers, shown in the pictures, along with the bolt pattern being off by 2 thousandths of an inch, would have twisted the bolts and spacers outward and clockwise when tightened. This would have stressd the bolts pretty bad at flight weight. It would also tend to bind the brake drum against the edge of brake shoes.
After careful consideration and a long talk with my neighbor, a machinist, we came up with a solution by re drilling the bolt pattern on the drums and fabricating a solid spacer to secure both the drum and hub assembly into one solid unit when assembled. It works like a charm. The right gear is complete and now onto the left and the tail wheel assembly.
Factory design
New components
Square, Solid and Accurate Bolt Pattern. I feel better with this setup.
