Damazio family's RV-10 project: gear

Showing posts with label gear. Show all posts

Nose gear leg fairing re-do

I finished reinstalling the wheel after the fairing bracket, by securing the disk with safety wire:

I received the replacement nose gear leg fairing, and this time marked and cut the top opening in the right place (quadruple-checked before cutting :) ):

Template attached to nose gear leg fairing

Original nose gear leg fairing (top) and new one marked in the correct place (bottom)

The template is quite conservative, so it took many iterations of trimming 1/8" at a time until I got it to fully wrap around the gear leg nutplate brackets. I had to trim both the bottom where it contacts the nose wheel fairing, and the top edges to move it aft by about a 1/2" and up about 1/4":

Nose gear leg fairing clamped in place

Next, I followed the instructions a bit out of order - first, I match-drilled the screw holes to have a fixed position for the fairing. I did that by sanding the gel coat off in the area that the underlying bracket would be, which worked well for sighting the holes. This also allowed me to mark where the brackets were, for aligning and trimming the hinges.

Nose gear leg bracket hole visible through a sanded area of the fairing

I then drilled the hinges by the recommended spacing, clamped them to the fairing, and match-drilled from the inside:

Nose gear leg fairing with hinge match-drilled to it

Finally, I trimmed the hinges to avoid the brackets, and trimmed the bottom edge of the fairing to provide the required 3/16" clearance:

Fully trimmed nose gear leg fairing attached in place

With all that done, I countersunk the attachment holes, then primed the hinges and riveted the nutplates and hinges in place:

Nutplates attached to nose gear leg brackets

Nose gear leg fairing with hinges riveted to it

Slightly related, I noticed the tug was removing the paint (and at some point, would be primer) from the attachment point, so I cut some adhesive foam to protect it - it won't last forever either, but it's easy to replace later as needed:

With this, the only part of this section still left (for later) is the top intersection fairings, which will be better done after the wings are attached.

Time lapse:

Total gear leg and wheel fairing rivets: 53

Total gear leg and wheel fairing time: 110.8h

Engine mount and nose gear progress

We primed the nose gear fork (except the brass insert, of course) and mounted it and the wheel in place:

Primed nose gear fork

Nose gear fork in place

Nose wheel attached to nose gear fork

We match-drilled and temporarily installed the engine mount, with the nose gear:

Engine mount attached in place

Nose gear installation parts

Nose gear installed in place

Actually attaching the nosewheel, while keeping the plane level to work on the fairing, required jacking the airplane significantly higher:

Significant gap below the main wheels to get the airplane level

Nose wheel installed in place

This was a while ago, and I've seen done a lot of work on the fairing (posted separately). The main thing left for this section is permanently installing the engine mount, which I'll only do after having the fiberfrax firewall protection in place, which in turn I'll only do after having the engine hung (but not permanently attached) at least once to measure distances and positions (e.g. the hose for the EFII pressure regulator gives a specific position for the regulator, which needs to be measured with the engine in place).

Time lapse:

Total engine mount and nose gear time: 19.9h

Nose wheel and gear leg fairing progress

Now that the main wheel fairings are done, we started attachment of the nose wheel fairing. To our surprise, but consistent with other reports on VAF, the fairing sat high enough (with the Vans-recommended spacer block) that it was hitting the diagonal part of the nose gear leg, so it had to be trimmed quite a bit further to fit in the right spot. Once it did, we transferred the holes from the brackets to the fairing (using the magnet technique) and then trimmed the openings to give enough clearance:

Nose wheel fairing top hole, elongated to clear the nose gear leg

Marking the required tire clearance on the bottom of the fairing for trimming

I'm glad I opened up the tug holes slowly, because they were initially misaligned - opened them up in the right direction with the Dremel tool, and then added the tug guard mod and its doubler:

Misaligned tug bar hole with correct position marked

Tug guard match-drilled to nose gear fairing

Tug guard doubler inside nose wheel fairing

I also installed the hinges on the main leg fairings in preparation for attaching them:

Main gear leg fairing with hinge match-drilled

Countersunk main gear leg fairing hinge attachment holes

Inside of the hinge riveted to the main gear leg fairing

Hinge fully riveted to main gear leg fairing

I then used the templates to cut the required openings on the nose leg fairing:

Nose gear leg fairing after initial trimming with the template

Next we still need to finish the nose wheel fairing, then actually attach the leg fairings.

Time lapse:

Total gear leg and wheel fairing rivets: 60

Total gear leg and wheel fairing time: 56.8h

Main wheel fairing reinforcement and filling

I reinforced the wheel pant holes we had drilled with a couple layers of fiberglass:

Main wheel fairing reinforcements in place

Main wheel fairing reinforcements after curing

It was then time to fill the gaps between the fairings and the bracket, starting with protecting the brackets with aluminum tape and waxing that:

Right fairing bracket wrapped with aluminum tape for gap filling

Axle extension wrapped with aluminum tape for gap filling

The first batch gave pretty good results, and only required a bit of sanding with the Dremel to get to a final shape:

Main forward fairing aft gap fill before finishing

Main forward fairing axle gap fill before finishing

Sanded right main forward fairing axle gap fill

Sanded right main forward fairing gap fill

When I tried to do the other side by myself, however, the fairings probably moved around too much as I tried to position them, and that made a big mess, so we had to repeat the process to fill the gaps:

Big resin mess around left aft fairing holes

Big resin mess around forward fairing holes

Fixed and sanded gap fill on right main wheel forward fairing

Fixed and sanded gap fill on left main wheel aft fairing

I also started the leg fairings, by using the templates (I printed additional copies of it) to mark the cut lines, then actually cutting them:

Main leg fairings marked for cutting

They fit nicely in place, but we still need to align them (another slightly annoying step):

Main wheel and leg fairings in place

We're also getting ready to do the nose gear fairing, so the wheel and brackets are now in place:

Nose gear with wheel and brackets in place

Time lapse:

Total gear leg and wheel fairing time: 38.7h

Main wheel fairings aligned and drilled

Due to the Beringer wheels having different dimensions from the stock wheels (stock wheels are recessed at the center), the axle extensions from Aircraft Specialty needed trimming (reducing the length by 3/4", then deepening the side hole back to 1" of depth), which was easily done on a lathe, except I didn't have one, so a friend was kind enough to do it for me:

Shortened axle extensions

Trimmed axle extension installed in place

With that, we could finally get the the wheel fairings properly aligned - with lots of measurements, markings on the floor (in case it helps anyone, both ends ended up at just about 110.5cm from the airplane's centerline), and a self-leveling laser to help, and slowly opening up the gear leg hole a bit more, we got it aligned just right, then used used magnets to "sight" the hole location from the inside and drill it #40 (with only one minor mistake, which will later get filled with flox anyway) - we used pin punches and drill bits to keep it in place while drilling the other holes:

Measuring the distance from the aircraft centerline

Self-leveling laser marking the horizontal reference for aligning the fairing

Right wheel fairing aligned just right thanks to the self-leveling laser

Right wheel fairing "temporarily attached" with the drill bit itself and a pin punch

I then opened up the holes to #36/#27 and tapped the bracket for screws:

Right wheel fairing screwed in place

Rinse, repeat it all for the left side:

Left wheel fairing in place

We measured and marked the required gaps around the gear legs and the tires, then trimmed the fairings to those markings:

Marking the required gap around the tire is slightly awkward

I then started the nose wheel fairing, with a similar process to make the parts fit together:

Nose gear forward fairing attachment holes marked and drilled

Nose gear fairing center markings

As a last step that I could do before the nose wheel is on (which requires jacking the aircraft a bit higher) was to open up the large hole that the nose gear leg goes through: