Main landing gear installed.
The gear came from my Byron Hellcat - rebuilt after the crash. Though the same scale, found that the Ziroli would need another inch of length on the rotating strut. Robart Mfg. made up a couple new, longer rotating struts for me. Also, obtained new torque link mounts, as the originals had been ground to center the wheels in the Byron's wheel wells.
After fitting everything, I epoxied the mounting rails in place. Then, after drilling and screwing the gear in place, I found that the strut was hitting the bottom of the wing mount sleeve. Loose, I had plenty of clearance, but tightening the gear in place with the screws took all the clearance away. When selecting wing mount tube size, I stayed with the original 1.5" diameter, but went with carbon instead of aluminum as called out on the plans. I probably could have downsized to 1" tubing, and my landing gear issue would not have happened.
Options now included: Shim under the gear; remove a patch from the sleeve where the strut was hitting; carefully remove the landing gear rails and start over.
At our recent giant scale air show, I saw several scale builds that looked great on the outside, but were a mess on the inside - far and away from my build quality, though I'm not a museum grade builder. So, I decided a shim between the landing gear and the rail, hidden from sight, was acceptable. I thought this a better solution than taking a patch out of the sleeve, which would be very visible (to other builders, only, perhaps). So, that is the result one sees in the pictures.
Gear length looks spot on - I haven't removed the rib cutouts for the wheel well, but it looks like the wheels, when retracted, will be centered in the wells with little or no grinding of the torque link mounts. Looks like Robart and I got these measurements right.
The frame for the Robart landing gear is the same size as that used in the 1/5.4 (95") Ziroli Hellcat. To fit, these had to pushed up them against the wing spar webbing. There was room to push them forward, but then the gear would have to be longer, and in the down position, they'd be farther forward than plan/scale, too. As a result of their placement, there is not enough clearance between the rear air cylinder fitting and the spar webbing to fit an airline and not have it kinked. So, I drilled a hole through the webbing, behind the fitting, large enough to slide the air line through and have it move freely as the gear operates - all good - everything is moving, locking into place when retracted and extending freely. Also, I drilled a second hole through the webbing to put the air line back into the forward section of the wing, where it will then feed through the existing rib holes back to the fuse. This loop in the wheel well will be above the wing mount sleeve - should be out of sight.
Dale