The reamers I ordered from Avery arrived today. I called Jorge Martinez who had asked me to let him know when I was going to ream the holes in the main gear mounts. He came right over.
We raised the front of the project and rested it on my work mate table. Jorge held up the tail while I fitted the gear legs into the sockets of the gear mounts. It took a couple of trys on each main gear leg. I had to use emery cloth on the gear legs in a couple of places, and also on the inside of the sockets of the gear mounts in order to get the gear legs to fit into the sockets.
It took some thinking to figure out how to ream the hole in the gear mount because the reamer is long and could not be directed from the top or bottom when fitted to a drill motor. The solution was to insert the reamer, shaft up, through the holes in the gear mount so that the shaft was protuding out the top hole. I then chucked the shaft into a drill and pulled the spinning reamer up through the holes. It worked well. I tried the AN bolts that fit in the hole and they were a very tight fit which is what I want. I only inserted them enough to know that they would fit, but will probably have to be tapped in with a hammer.
After reaming and fitting the main gear legs, we removed them and lowered the fuselage back into its cradle. It is difficult to work inside the fuselage when it is raised to a height that it will be when on the gear.
We went to sears to buy a large adjustable wrench in order to install the nut on the end of the main gear axle. I fitted the wheel onto one of the gear legs, snugged up the nut that holds it on and marked the threads of the gear leg for a safety wire hole.
We removed the nut and tire and drilled two holes for safety wire in the marked places. It was difficult to do. We did the first one on the drill press. It was difficult to hold it in place. The second hole was drilled through the nut which was reinstalled and matched to the safety wire hole we had just drilled. I drilled the second hole us
