Drilled and reamed the holes for the AN6 landing gear attach points. I step drilled them out to 31/64" then finished with a 1/2" reamer. I will be pressing in hardened steel drill bushings in these holes later for durability. Rather than use the LMGA tube as originally designed I am going to use a method suggested by Gary Hertzler in one of the Central States Newsletter. The method consists of a full length inner 4130 tube inside a 5/8" OD 4130 outer tube. The large bolt will clamp up the inner tube. The outer tube will be made .010" shorter and be allowed to rotate on the inner tube. This will prevent torque being applied to the landing gear brackets due to large deflections of the main gear hoop. Tonight I started making the inner tubes. These are 1/2 OD 4130 .065 wall. To fit the AN6 bolt the ID needed to be reamed. I did this on my lathe using a .3775 reamer. I will be cad plating these so I am planning to loose about .001 on the ID after plate. This should allow a nice fit with the AN6 bolt. These two tubes will be cut down to the 6.9" dimension now that the ID is sized.
Brackets and Inner Tubes - Reamers in the foreground
