Van's Air Force
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Torquing Landing Gear Bolts
- Thread starter NavyS3BNFO
- Start date
I tape the box wrench at the bottom landing gear access hatch with Gorilla tape, and torque the nut from inside.
Beware: During phase 1, after 10 hours, I rechecked the torque inside the gear tower, everything was still in torque. Great so I thought. But, I FORGOT to remove the box wrench because when I checked the tools on the floor found found none
and thinking I cleaned up everything. I went and flew for two hours and landed. At post flight inspection, I found the box wrench was still attached inside the bottom gear access panel.
Breaking News: tests on landing gear nuts and bolts
I have been a little skeptical about the strength of the NAS679A6 nuts that Van's supplies for the main landing gear bolts on the RV-8. So, I decided to do some tests of various different nuts to see what the different strengths are. We wanted to simulate the tension load that gets put on the...
vansairforce.net
Is there any reason why I couldn't drill the heads of the bolts and safety wire them to keep from turning while torquing the nuts from inside?
I've got the Grove gear on mine; annotated the plans with the Grove designated bolts and torque values. No easy way to check the torque every year that I've found. Stand on your head and bruise some knuckles.
This socket really helps. It’s almost trivial to torque the nuts. Aim the socket for the corner and it almost falls on the nut. Even with the stock gear tower openings.
Tightening RV8 NAS1804 Landing gear nuts
I made this offset socket to torque the nuts in the gear towers. It’s a 12 point 7/16 socket driven by a 1/4” drive 9/16 crowfoot wrench and brazed tougher. The 1” offset allows you to reach under the vent lines. You do have to compensate for the offset in torque setting but It’s pretty easy to use.
vansairforce.net
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I have no idea why Van designed the landing gear attach bolts to be inserted upside down. Torquing them is a royal PIA. After maintaining them for several years in the original configuration, I acquired a set of anti rotation clips from a fellow RV-8 builder. Using the clips, you install the bolts with the head of the bolt in the gear leg tower. Torquing the bolts is now a 10 second operation. A good description of the process can be found here.
The only problem I see with that is cosmetic. It requires more clearance on the underside near the covers and fairings, especially with the Grove or Sky Designs aluminum gear since it's thicker and the bolts are longer.
Bruce still makes those clips, and I don’t think the design has changed since he started. I’ve installed them on both of my RV8’s and a couple others using the stronger nuts, and in my case they fit under the fairing without modification. On Bruce’s airplane, he has the thicker Grove gear and the nuts protrude very slightly through the fairing. He just made a hole in the fairing to accommodate that - hardly noticeable. The demand for those clips is very sporadic. He won’t get a request for several months, then all of a sudden he gets calls for ten sets (40) of them. He just made a batch of them a couple weeks ago.
Install the anti rotation clips inside the gear towers and reverse the bolts. Takes 15 seconds to torque them from the bottom. I installed them after 5 years of pain and agony. It’s a poor design from Vans.
