I have had a few days to work in the shop for an hour each time in the last week. I am still focusing on getting the nose gear/gear doors dialed in so that I can get to finishing the bottom of the fuselage.
Since I have never been quite happy with the way my first attempt at the gear doors turned out, I have already started to remake them. I started this process with the nose gear bowl and new style hinges. As I was preparing to make new doors, I realized that the nose gear was not actually retracting all the way into the fuselage. The tire was proud of the fuselage bottom by .2 inches.
To investigate, I took the nose gear strut out of the airplane, and measured the locations of all the brackets on the gear strut. They turned out to be within tolerances. Then I realized that when I took the gear motor off the strut, the gear stayed in the same position. That eliminates the gear motor/gear motor attach (NG3), as the causes. The gear was hanging up on the strut cover (SC), the fiberglass part that creates the gear well.
Luckily, that is a pretty easy fix, and a lesser of any evils that could have been causing the problem. I cut out the entirety of the SC, and am making a new one.
</a
Big kudos to Mike Beasley, who has photos of the process of making a SC on his website. As it was a prefab part for most Long Ez’s there are no plans for it.
Basically the process is creating a foam mold, covered in duct tape, that is used to layup the new SC. It is then trimmed, fit, and installed. Today I was able to build the foam mold, and layup the part. Tomorrow I will work on trimming, fitting and installing.
In addition, I fabricated 6 of the new design hinges for the gear doors. Four will be used for the gear doors, and 2 will be modified further to be used for the forward strut cover ahead of the pivot point.
the Garaggio 