Richard Pike
Joined: 09 Jan 2006
Posts: 1671
Location: Blountville, Tennessee
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 Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2017 4:10 pm Post subject: Gear alignment |
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I suppose all of us have fussed over getting the gear aligned as accurately as possible when drilling the holes for the gear legs/axle fittings. If you have ever flown a tail dragger that had the gear aligned wrong, you know what a spooky, unpredictable thing that is.
The first picture is of the axle fittings off the wrecked Firestar from which we sourced for our Firefly project. I was not there when this abomination took place, but I suspect that it was not a smiley-face day! We really did not want to go anywhere in this direction!
When we did the new gear for our Firefly project we did our best to get it as perfect as possible, but still ended up with the left gear toed-in about 3 degrees. Urrgh... Here is the fix: Used a Dremel tool with a tapered stone to elongate the 1/4" holes through the gear leg/axle fitting so that the fitting could be rotated backwards to toe it out a bit. Once the holes were elongated enough, chucked the fitting in the vise and used the pictured all-thread sticking out on one side with a weight on it to keep the washers rotated to the new desired position on the axle fitting.
The goal was to weld two 1/4" AN960 washers in place to hold the retaining bolt in the desired position through the axle fitting.
It worked. After welding the washers in place, ran the 1/4" drill bit through the whole assembly one time with the gear leg in place just to clean up the inevitable minor misalignment's and now both axle fittings are exactly at the desired angle. Now anytime we might have to disassemble anything for any reason, it will go back together at exactly the correct angle.
Hope this will be useful for someone else down the road.
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_________________
Richard Pike
Kolb MKIII N420P (420ldPoops)
Kingsport, TN 3TN0
Forgiving is tough, being forgiven is wonderful, and God's grace really is amazing. |
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