Gear question

[mandm1516]

I have stock gear for my -8 quick build. The fuselage was on the gear when I bought the kit, but removed for shipping and I haven't put them on since to ease work on the fuselage.

I've decided I'm going to switch to the Grove lightweight gear and may have found someone interested in buying these.

Since I didn't mount them, my question is about the brackets. Are they match drilled for my aircraft? The grove gear come with pre-drilled brackets, but will they be bolt in replacements? Guess what I'm asking is if I sell my current gear, should I keep the brackets I have now or does it matter/are they all the same?

Thanks.

 

[rv8ch]

grove brackets

I believe you need to use the Grove brackets, since the Grove gear is thicker, and the brackets end up compensating for this thickness. The brackets are pre-drilled.

I've got some pictures here that show the difference.

http://www.rv8.ch/article.php?story=20040404153921362

The holes in the two different sets of brackets are pretty much the same distance from each other, but I didn't measure them precisely.

I've only fit the Grove gear, which are very straight, but I've read that others have had to compensate for the slight variations with the steel gear legs. This could potentially mean that your Grove gear would not be mounted "straight". I would be interested in what you find here.

Regards,
Mickey

 

[Rick6a]

...... The grove gear come with pre-drilled brackets, but will they be bolt in replacements? Guess what I'm asking is if I sell my current gear, should I keep the brackets I have now or does it matter/are they all the same?

Thanks.

Mike,

Shown below are the unique custom brackets included with the Grove Airfoil type gear. I deleted the kit supplied gear leg brackets from among the parts normally shipped with the kit. After epoxy priming, I numbered the Grove brackets for easy identification. On my standard fuselage kit, the pre-drilled brackets were located to, drilled through and then final reamed to the undrilled gear towers. The bottom photo shows that a Grove bracket is a bit large and beefy requiring some extra trimming for a good fit. No biggie.

If I could offer one piece of advice, because of the location of the upper threaded (brake line) port in the Grove Airfoil design, I recommend reversing the penetration points of the fuel vent line and brake line as called out in the airframe plans thereby making plumbing the Grove gear leg a much easier task to accomplish.

 

[mandm1516]

Rick,

Thanks for the advice and pictures, I saw some pictures here somewhere showing the better location for brake lines--have to definitely remember that when it's time to run the lines.

If I understand your post correctly, the brackets your received from Grove were already pre-drilled, but then had to be match drilled/reamed to the gear towers. So if my gear have already been mounted, and the stock brackets have already been match drilled, if I were to replace them now with Grove Gear, could I face problems with holes not lining up properly? Have others replaced stock gear with grove gear after the stock gear were mounted?