Installing the Main Landing Gear
The “main gear” is the legs/wheels on the left and right, as opposed to the single wheel in front, and this is what we worked on first. The gear leg mount is already bolted in the fuselage, so the first step is to insert the gear leg into the mount. The gear leg is heavy (about 40 lbs of solid steel) and it’s a tight fit in the mount, so it wasn’t exactly easy.
Once the leg is where it’s supposed to be, the single bolt hole in the gear mount needs to be drilled, then the bolt is inserted and fastened. It’s an AN5 bolt, which is nominally 5/16″ in diameter, but Van’s recommends using a .310″ or 7.9 mm bit, which is slightly undersize, ensuring a tight bolt fit. With a loose bolt, I suppose the gear could twist in the mount. Anyway, I think the bit was slightly smaller than it should have been, which made the bolt *really* difficult to get in. I had to enlarge the hole a little and use a rubber mallet to get the bolt in all the way. We finally got it to work, though. Here I am installing the bolt.
While I started on the second leg, Kelly started working on the rest of the gear. Here she’s bolting some stuff together.
Next up was mounting the wheels. This is a pain–after putting the wheel on, we had to get just enough torque on the axle nut to keep the wheel from wiggling and the bearing from spinning on the axle, but not so much that there was too much friction on the wheel. Then, we had to drill holes in the axle for a giant cotter pin to keep the axle bolt from turning. We’re done now, with both wheels mounted.
Below is a closeup of the wheel area. The pointy thing on the left is called the axle extension–it’s attached to the outside of the wheel pant (wheel cover). The plate on the right is attached to the inside of the wheel pant. You can also see the brakes attached here–it’s a pretty basic disc brake system.
Next up, running the brake lines from the fuselage down to the wheels. In parallel, we’re starting the wheel pants. The pants need to be done with the airplane off the ground, so we want to get that done ASAP so we can get the fuselage off the table.
