Today I got out to the shop and mounted the tires and tubes to the wheels. These are two-piece rims so they are very easy to get together. Some talc on the tubes made everything a cinch. I still plane to balance them, but I'll do that later.
I then prepped the gear legs by match-drilling the brackets for the steering stops and caliper mounts.
I used set of straps around the engine mount and my engine hoist to lift the fuselage. I greased up the base metal on the gear legs and they slid in place and the bolt went in with a few taps with a mallet. Thr nose gear went on just fine also. Back when I fit the nose gear leg to the engine mount I used an undersize ream (0.3120 vs 0.3125), but I found that there was still a tiny bit of play with the AN bolt. AN bolts aren't close tolerance so I ordered what I thought was the correct close-tolerance bolt. It turns out I don't understand the NAS numbering system as well as I thought, it was too short (even though it was the same dash number as the AN bolt...??). I will need to order another bolt, so for now I will just use the AN bolt.
I them mounted the wheels and nose fork to the gear legs. Crossed my fingers and lowered the hoist. Everything stayed together. I rolled the fuselage outside so I could finally clean the floor properly.
