Thursday, April 7, 2011

Gear Back On

The gear is finally back on. I still have 3 rivets to install on the skins around the gear. They need some modified bucking bars to get them in and I need to crawl in the fuselage to figure out what is needed. I haven't wanted to crawl in until the plane was off the stand. The rivets are also easy to get at with the gear on. I still need to install one of the wedges and torque the 2 attachment bolts.Someone had modified the skin on the left side to get at the wedge bolts better. I did those 2 wedges first without realizing how much easier it was with some room to work and being able to see what was happening. The right side has not been modified and is tough. On top of that the slight amount of primer I put on the gear, 2 coats, prevents the wedges from going in as far as they did in the factory. This requires longer bolts which adds to the problem. I did not repaint the wedges for that reason and wiped off any primer on the channels with MEK. The wedges are a very shallow taper so it doesn't take much to make a big difference. I got each wedge lined up with the bolt hole and then started the bolt in to assure it would be lined up free to turn it in. Then I pounded the wedge in tight per the Cessna 100 Series manual and tightened the bolt. Once I was convinced I had the wedge as far as it would go I checked the bolt with the mirror and found I had 1 - 2 threads through the nut plate, perfect. I don't trust that the wedges are in as far as they should be since I used AN4-10A bolts and the parts list shows AN4-5A. The bolts I removed were AN4-6A, but even then 1/4" longer bolts leaves me believing the wedges can go in further. I'll recheck them as we move forward and also after we start flying just to see if they can be wedged in further. I quit when it got dark and I got tired. It's still very cool to have the gear back on.

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