Nose and nose gear - part 6

Nose gear leg (6.6 hrs)

The nose gear leg (NG-1L) is a fiberglass piece I bought from FeatherLite last year together with the main gear bow.

Main and nose gear legs

While the main gear needed a lot of BID reinforcement to add torsional rigidity, the nose leg only takes 2 layers of BID for... as the manual calls it... “split protection”.

Plan's directions

First as always, I knocked the slippery shine off the nose leg with the sander, being careful not to remove too much material.

Sanding, the EZ way.

To quickly remove the corner sharp edges, I secured (in a very unsafe manner) my router to the big table, and ran the leg past the router bit as if it were a router table.

Routing the corners

I still had a bit of manual sanding to do, but it was easily done with my perma-grit tools. Speaking of which, I’m finding myself using the flat one more than any other of them, followed by the round tube sanding tool.

These sanding tools are awesome!

Glassing was the usual sequence of cutting the glass, wetting the piece with pure epoxy, applying the glass and epoxy, and peel-plying where needed.

BID selection

Pure epoxy sponge bath

BID pre-preg application

Peel-ply added

After cure, I removed the peel-ply, flipped the part over, and Bondoed it to a couple of screws, exactly as I did when glassing the main gear, to make a sturdier setup, then repeated the glassing procedure.

Front of the leg about to get fiberglassed

Sleeping beauty curing overnight

The Saran-Wrap helped hold down the edges, and prevented air from being sucked into the layup from above.

Another overnight cure, a little trimming, and voilà... a ready to use nose gear leg.

Quick way to get rid of the sharp edges

NG-1L done

The biggest source of concern at this point was to make sure the 4 holes attaching the leg to the NG-6A casting were drilled so that the far end of the leg would be centered between both NG-30s. I used shims and a caliper to arrive at equal gaps on either sides of the leg.

Finding the center position

Desired position captured by the clamp

NG-6A and NG-5. The top of the nose gear leg needs to go in there.

With NG-6A clamped into the desired position onto NG-1L, I transferred both of them to my drill press. Since the nose gear is bowed, I used parallels to make sure that the casting’s reference machined surfaces were parallel to the table before drilling. 

Parallels (one on each side) ensure the casting is horizontal

For the actual drilling operation, I switched to a more rigid way of holding on to the work.

Nothing should move now

Holes were drilled as far as possible (half way), then finished by hand on the bench.

The holes drilled in the leg matched the ones on the casting (NG-6A) as well as the ones on the top plate I made on the mill (NG-5), and everything fit as I expected, until I tried to bolt it all down.

This just isn't going to work!

Another day in the life of a non-kit builder 

The other side is good

As if I needed another reminder that I was not building one of those exquisite Van’s RV kits, a fair amount of custom grinding with a Dremel wheel proved necessary to make sure all washers laid down flat enough to bolt it all together.

All better now!