Landing gear, wheels, rear opening, turtledeck

 The correct bolts for our landing gear arrived, so we were finally able to attach the gear to the fuselage. The gear managed to get a couple of paint scuffs during the process of threading it through the opening we made, but these were minor and can be touched up easily enough.

Next we proceeded to install the axles, brakes (by Matco), and wheels.  The wheel bearings had to be greased prior to installation, and we used a nifty plastic device that has a plunger to force grease into the bearings.  This worked well.  Once attached, we torqued all the bolts down to the proper value and applied torque seal.  The large castle nut on the wheel was installed with a cotter pin.

Pushing grease into the bearings

Main landing gear and wheels attached

We installed 3 rivnuts around the lower rear fuselage opening that will be used to attach the bottom rear coverplate.  

Installing rivnuts with a special puller tool

Next we planned on doing some work on the aluminum turtledeck prior to painting it, but first needed to temporarily attach the rear windshield bracket as the turtledeck rests on top of it.  We ran into a bit of a problem here because of a few issues.  We had previously placed and drilled this bracket, but when temporarily installed with Cleco's, it didn't line up correctly with the right and left root rib.  We're not sure what happened, and maybe it slipped when it was last drilled (many moons ago).  Also the bracket had a few odd bends to it so the back edge was not straight, and the bracket angle didn't line up with the root ribs, either.  We considered ways of recovering from this and rebending the bracket, but decided to just order a new bracket and redrill it.  The bracket was only $16 from Just, which made it an easy decision.   Hours: 9.5

Fuselage unwrapping, Side panels, Baggage door hinge

We finally removed all masking and protective wrap from the fuselage and got a good look at the two-tone paint job.   Looks great and we are very happy with the results.  We are planning on adding a 1" stripe between the white and orange, but that won't be applied until later.

 

We installed the landing gear brackets, and had planned on immediately installing the landing gear so that we could get the plane on wheels again, but ran into a minor issue.  The bolts we have on hand are slightly too short.  We ordered some longer bolts and will install it when they arrive.

In the meantime, we decided to install rivnuts (rivet nuts) for the front aluminum panels located on the front-sides of the fuselage.  We up-drilled holes in several (24) of the steel fuselage tabs to accept the rivnuts, deburred the holes, and then installed the rivnuts with a puller.  We also added a little epoxy when installing the rivnuts which was a recommendation we got from Kitplanes magazine.  This will make them much less likely to fail (break free and spin) in the future.  Hours: 5

RivNut installed in the metal tabs

Next, we riveted on the hinge for the baggage door that we had previously fabricated. 

Hours: 5.0

Hinge riveted to fuselage

Landing Gear and Mounts are Orange

 We laid down a coat of orange on the Grove landing gear and the mounts for the gear.  We sanded them lightly the next day, and followed that up with another coat of orange.  Very happy with how they came out..they are looking pretty sharp with a couple coats of Ocala orange. Hours: 5

Gear and mounts painted

Epoxy Priming Main Landing Gear and Gear Mounts

We received our packet from Aircraft Spruce containing AlumiPrep and a new quart of Superflite Epoxy Primer and Catalyst.  Each of the parts were cleaned with AlumiPrep cleaner and then flooded with water to neutralize the cleaner.  The parts were wiped dry, all holes were dried with compressed air.  Our final step was to wipe the parts with Isopropyl Alcohol.  The all parts were painted with the Superflite Epoxy Primer and allowed to dry overnight.  We lightly sanded the parts with a Grey Scotchbrite pad and inspected the parts for coverage.  The main gear looked adequately covered, but the smaller parts had some areas that needed a second coat so we wiped them down again with Isopropyl Alcohol and sprayed another coat of Epoxy Primer.

After another day to dry, the parts were lightly sanded again with grey Scotchbrite and inspected.  The parts are now ready for their final top coat of Ocala Orange paint.

Hours: 4.5

Parts in their nice white Epoxy Primer

Painting updates and other items

Been a while since we've had a blog update, so here is the current status:

Fuselage painting:  We sprayed the 2nd and final coat of orange on the lower fuselage, then buffed out a few dust particles that always seem to find their way into the paint.  We wanted to remove all the masking on the fuselage, but decided to leave it on because we can't easily move the fuselage out of the paint room until we can put it back on the landing gear...which still needs to be painted.  So instead, we actually added some more masking to encapsulate the fuselage and moved it all the way to one side of the paint booth.  This will give us room to paint the landing gear in the booth while protecting the fuselage from any overspray.

Also, in the middle of September, we took a trip to Sebring, FL to attend 3 days of classes on Rotax engines.  We attended a 2 day class on engine maintenance and 1 day class on Rotax 912is installation.  The classes were excellent and we both learned some very useful tips from Rotax experts.

With the fuselage safely moved to one side of the booth, we prepped the Grove landing gear by removing some surface corrosion, cleaning it thoroughly, and hanging it up in the paint booth.  We also prepped the landing gear attach brackets.

Since we are priming aluminum, we changed to a different primer designed for use on metal.  We are using Superflite SF80 primer with SF820 catalyst.  We attempted to spray the primer, but ran into problems right away as spots started appearing on the parts, which could have indicated some sort of contamination either in the primer or on the aluminum.  We IMMEDIATELY stopped spraying (a lesson well learned from our issues fuselage painting).  We then immediately cleaned all the sprayed paint off of the landing gear with acetone.  This went quickly and only took a few minutes.  

So now we needed to figure out what went wrong.   Next go around, we are going to clean the aluminum with a product called "alumiprep" which should do a better job of cleaning in case there was still some contamination on the aluminum.  But it now looks like the problem was more likely caused by the primer/catalyst.  The product we had was purchased a little over 3 years ago, and we thought it would be OK, but we found that after mixing primer with catalyst (in the right proportions), it would never cure, even after sitting out for over 24 hours.  Not sure if the problem was with the primer or the catalyst, so we are ordering a fresh set of both and will try again once we get the new batch which should arrive in about a week.  Hours: 10

Landing gear prepped and hung for paint