Took a couple trips to Van's (29 mi. each way--lucky me, I didn't have to ship the things!), but they gave me replacement legs & sockets. The short story: The gear legs were too big to fit in the sockets.
The long story: For those who didn't read the earlier post, I couldn't get the gear legs into the sockets (aka weldments). Folks on VAF & Van's suggested using lots of grease and other answers, but nothing worked.
A couple weeks ago at the Scappoose fly-in I talked to Harmon, who makes the legs for Van's and he said they only allow .001" tolerance & suggested using one of those sanding flapper things on the sockets to open them up. I didn't want to do that because if I messed them up I would have to pay for replacement legs. Harmon did say they were supposed to be 1.4375" and you have to measure with a micrometer, not a caliper.
A friend, George, has a wife who works at Van's and has a micrometer that would measure 1-2". We checked the diameter: 1.4380 and 1.4381".
On the way to Van's, took the sockets to a machine shop where they measured the ID and they came out to be 1.4380 on both.
At Van's, they said they "never had a problem with them before" & wanted to turn them over to their machinist (who was not there that day) to check them out. Left them there for the weekend. On Monday, George's wife brought them home to the airport where they live & where I keep my Interstate, only 8 easy miles from home. Said I had just not been aggressive enough with the crocus cloth, but now they would fit. But they didn't. They were now too loose, with one leg actually rattling in the socket.
Back to Van's. This time it was their purchasing guy at the counter. Again, "We've never had a problem with these before." So he wanted Harmon to look at them and was mostly concerned with it as a purchasing problem.
Upshot: A day later, George's wife had new legs and sockets waiting for me at their house. On behalf of Van's, she was appropriately apologetic and explained that none of the people I talked to at the counter realized the close tolerances they were supposed to have (even though I told them what Harmon had said).
Less then 5 minutes work cleaning up the powder coat inside the sockets & the legs slipped right in.
The long story: For those who didn't read the earlier post, I couldn't get the gear legs into the sockets (aka weldments). Folks on VAF & Van's suggested using lots of grease and other answers, but nothing worked.
A couple weeks ago at the Scappoose fly-in I talked to Harmon, who makes the legs for Van's and he said they only allow .001" tolerance & suggested using one of those sanding flapper things on the sockets to open them up. I didn't want to do that because if I messed them up I would have to pay for replacement legs. Harmon did say they were supposed to be 1.4375" and you have to measure with a micrometer, not a caliper.
A friend, George, has a wife who works at Van's and has a micrometer that would measure 1-2". We checked the diameter: 1.4380 and 1.4381".
On the way to Van's, took the sockets to a machine shop where they measured the ID and they came out to be 1.4380 on both.
At Van's, they said they "never had a problem with them before" & wanted to turn them over to their machinist (who was not there that day) to check them out. Left them there for the weekend. On Monday, George's wife brought them home to the airport where they live & where I keep my Interstate, only 8 easy miles from home. Said I had just not been aggressive enough with the crocus cloth, but now they would fit. But they didn't. They were now too loose, with one leg actually rattling in the socket.
Back to Van's. This time it was their purchasing guy at the counter. Again, "We've never had a problem with these before." So he wanted Harmon to look at them and was mostly concerned with it as a purchasing problem.
Upshot: A day later, George's wife had new legs and sockets waiting for me at their house. On behalf of Van's, she was appropriately apologetic and explained that none of the people I talked to at the counter realized the close tolerances they were supposed to have (even though I told them what Harmon had said).
Less then 5 minutes work cleaning up the powder coat inside the sockets & the legs slipped right in.
