LandingGear

Drilled nutplates on the nosewheel pant brackets today and bolted them to the nosewheel fork with allen bolts.

Installed the flexible break lines I ordered from Pegasus racing on the main gear. Tied them to the gear with tie-wraps. This will all be covered by fiberglass later on.

The electronic fish scale that I ordered from Amazon came in today so I clamped the nose gear into my vise (with some wood as protection on the sides) and titened the big nut on the axle, while measuring the force to move the nose wheel fork out to the sides. When I was at approx. 26 lbs on both sides I drilled the axle for a cotter pin through the holes in the nut. After removing the nut I drilled the holes to final size with a #28 bit.

Next task is installing the nose gear on the engine mount and hanging the engine on the firewall.

The plan was to get the engine bolted to the firewall today, but unfortunately that didn't happen, because the bolt that is used to secure the nosewheel axle to the engine mount was too short. The plans call for a 20A, but because the Egg nosewheel tube on the mount is thicker than the Vans one, I really need a 22A. I'll order one from ACS and hang the engine next week. I did fabricate the two brackets for the nosewheel pants.

Today reached a major milestone. The plane is on the main gear! After quite a bit of preparation on the wheels and axle (drilling the cotter pin holes for example, the plane was flying for the first time :-) One the engine hoist, but flying nevertheless.

Here's a pic of the cotter pin in the main wheel axle and nut.

And the bolt through the gear weldment.

Also did some work on the firewall to prepare for the engine hanging tomorrow. Drilled the throttle cable hole and also drilled mounting holes for the coolant reservoir and the vacuum sensor. Also fabricated a firewall bracket for the fuel pressure regulator.

Tomorrow will need to do some more work on the nosewheel (measuring breakout force etc) and then the engine can go on the firewall for good.

Hauled the engine and mount all the way up with the hoist and match drilled the nose wheel axle to the mount today. First I drilled out the existing hole in the mount out to 17/64 followed to a 9/32 followed by a 5/16 reamer. After that the axle got installed and held in place by some clamps while I drilled a 9/16 holes through the mount on the other side. That took a little while and a lot of oil since it is pretty thick steel. Last but not least the hole got reamed out the 5/16 and the bolt installed.

Installed the left wheel on the main gear axle. After the experience with the other one yesterday this was pretty easy.

I managed to get the inboard brake shoe off the caliper with a little bit of force and so could install the right wheel on the axle tonight. I did get the wheel bearings out, cleaned them and re-greased them before putting them back in.

Tomorrow I hopefully can install the left wheel.

Fabricated the U408 spacers today using my bandsaw and a piece of emery cloth under the chuck of my drill press.

Next was bolting the U403 brackets to the axles with an allen bolt and self-locking nut after adding the brake mounting bracket. This needed some grinding of a side of some washers to make sure they wouldn't sit against the mounting bracket.

Last but not least tonight I deburred and primed the U810 inboard wheel pant attach brackets and bolted them to the brake mounting and U403 brackets using the U408 spacers I just fabricated. These things start to look like a main landing gear!

Started to figure out how to put the brake assemblies on the main landing gear tonight. Instructions and drawings are not to great, but I think I have an idea how this works. Match drilled the right U-403 bracket to the axle.

The bearing grease came in from aircraft spruce today, so I decided to put the nosewheel in its fork. I also ordered a torque wrench, but it turned out that it is the wrong one! The nosewheel needs to be torqued to 7-10 ft/lbs, but the new wrench is 25-250 ft/lbs. So I guess I have to order another one...

The rolling resistance is considerable, but Vans says that this is normal and get better during the first couple of takeoffs and landings. I can't wait to see if that is true :-)

Tonight I also put the main wheel assemblies together. Wasn't as challenging as I thought it would be. Bolting the halves together was made easy by using a roll of painters tape underneath the wheel.

Here are some pics of the finished product left and right.

And here all all three wheels together.

I also spoke to Scott at Vans for the funny bearing. They are going to send me a new one under warranty (thanks Vans!) and I'll send them the funny one back.

Started to put the nosewheel assembly together tonight. That baby powder I bought was super useful to get the inner tube and the Matco cylinders in the tire.

Also bought a portable tire inflator at Pep Boys to get the pressure up to 60 psi a couple of times before inflating to the final pressure of 35 psi.

I did notice that the rubber seal on one of the axel bearings is not completely straight; I'll have to contact Vans tomorrow to find out if I can correct this or need a new one. See the following pictures to see the difference with the other bearing.