[mikeangiulo]

I'm working on my gear installation now and have read a bunch of posts about how hard it is to get a socket on some of the nuts once the gear is installed. I'm looking at the clearance and have an idea. This might be a totally stupid idea. I remember a Univair gear bolt conversion for my citabria that replaced a weak U shaped bolt with a steel bar and two high strength bolts. The bolts had "internally wrenching" allen style heads. MS20007-28 in that particular application. The heads are cone shaped and apparently strong enough to hold on landing gear in an identical application. What if I used bolts like that instead, threaded from inside the fuselage, and had the nuts on the outside? This way I could reach the head with an allen wrench through the gear tower and torque them from outside. This is almost too obvious so something must be wrong with the plan. What is it?

 

[DanH]

Might need to bump out the underside cover plate just a little to clear the nuts, but otherwise I don't see a darn thing wrong with the idea. Worst case you extend your glass fairing to serve as the cover plate too.

 

[Kevin Horton]

I installed my gear bolts with the nuts on the bottom. There was only a very small effect on the upper gear leg fairings. It was a lot easier to torque the nuts from the bottom than from inside the landing gear boxes.