Getting the gear legs out of the gear mount

[Jeff R]

Today I was preparing to mount the landing gear weldment to the fuselage. The instructions said to first drill out the holes in the upper gear leg to the mount for alighment. Ok. Well, that was a bit of a pain and it took a long time to get the hole drilled all the way through. (Maybe my drill bit was dull, though I had hardly ued it before - kind of a moot point now since it split when I was drilling the second gear.) Anyway, I finally got the first hole drilled and then I tried to remove the gear leg. I could barely rotate the leg, let alone back it out. (I had applied some grease to prevent the problem.) What to do? Well, I noticed that all the drilling made the area around the hole pretty warm, so I let it cool down, hoping the metal would contract and make the leg easier to remove. Even after that, I nearly wore myself out trying again to get the gear leg to back out, but all I could do was rotate the leg.

In frustration, I got a piece of wood about an inch square and 4" long and banged it on the inside part of the leg with a hammer, trying to bang the leg out. All I did was split the wood. Argh! The only thing I could think to do was to get some ice to further chill and contract the leg. But, seeing my rivet gun, I thought I would give it a try. I put in a muchroom set, upped the airr pressure to 80 psi and it worked! It drove out the leg in just a few seconds with hardly any effort at all!

Right now, the left gear mount installed (left loose for now), and the right gear is 3/4ths the way drilled through, but I will need to stop by the hardware store to get a new 5/16" bit to finish it.

[az_gila]

...and that is why the auto repair folks call their "non-precision rivet guns" air hammers....

gil A