[Don Patrick]

I was hoping someone could review my measurements before I start putting the drill to the fuselage.

The way I did the setup was by having two equal length pieces of 4 foot aluminum angle, that were clamped together and mirrored drilled for the axel bolt holes and then two holes 23 inches from centre fore and aft. Both gear had the holes in exactly the same location.

I copied Matt Dralle's use of a square sheet of plywood that fit in between the two angles, which kept the gear parallel to each other.

Of course the fuselage was leveled lateral and longitudinally, with the levels being located at the F-822 bottom skin.

6 plumb bobs in total were dropped.
I struck a centre line from the tail wheel mount centre holes and the firewall centre. The line was stretched, marked and tapped to the floor. The plumb bobs were dropped and measurements taken. The rear measurement wasn't taken from the rear plumb bob as I couldn't get around the saw horse, so I moved the line forward of the horse.

To my surprise, the measurements were pretty good after a little adjustment. The rear plumb bobs (C & D) to the rear centre line mark was out 1/16 of an inch and the to the forward centre line mark was out 3/32 of an inch.

Any comments or suggestions appreciated.

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Much thanks


Don

 

[skylor]

Gear Alignment

Don,

One thing that I found is that the gear legs may not necessarily sit perfectly flat against the outboard wear plates until they are drilled and bolted. What this means is that the gear legs may twist slightly when you install the outboard fasteners, thus changing their alignment a bit. So, what I did when I set up for the initial alignment prior to drilling the outboard 3/8" bolt holes was to install the axles and use some ratcheting cargo straps attached to the ends of the axles and the fuse upper longerons (or I may have used a long strap attached to both axles and stretched along the top of the fuse) to pull the outboard ends of the gear down (when the fuse is upside down). This forced the gear legs to sit flat against the outer wear plates so that the alignment stays the same from the time you drill them to when you install and torque the outboard bolts.

I hope this explanation makes sense. When I was all finished, the distance from outboard most portions of the gear legs to the center of the aft fuselage measured to within 1/64" of each other.

Skylor