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Old 12-16-2013 | 09:19 AM
  #1686  
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husafreak
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I initially mounted the gear in the wings as it fell into place. I was barely able to secure it on the rails by having cutouts for the bolts that went right to the edge of the door depression, by cutting the bolts short, by using a ball driver at an angle, by grinding away supporting plywood, and by trimming away a portion of the mounting flange from the blind nuts. Then after adjusting the toe in of my gear I found the tires were clearing the back edge of the wing surface by a millimeter with all the gear door depression ground away. I flew in like that for awhile but was never really comfortable. After a bad landing I lost my millimeter of clearance on one side so I decided to relocate the gear. After plugging the bolt holes and relocating the gear to put the wheels more centered in the well and giving me 5/16" clearance behind the tire when it passes the wing skin I found the bolts much easier to access and the peace of mind priceless. So it appears the plywood mounting is not being placed properly in the molded wing.
The first step should be to place the gear where it needs to be in the wing cutting away ply as necessary to accommodate the gear and cylinder. You will still have to grind away the ply support below the ply mounting rails (I used a dremel tool with a Permagrit cutting wheel) in some spots if you want to use trimmed blind nuts but that is pretty easy and fast to do just a bit of a pain to get at. I believe some have just tapped the ply for the 4mm bolts which would be easier but I used the blind nuts. Looking at my Ultra Flash the ply gear rails in it are approx. 10mm thick, that would be fine for simple tapping into the ply. But the gear on the Hawk is much bigger and the ply only approx. 6mm. Anyway if I were to simply tap the holes on a Hawk I would Hysol another layer of ply below the rails to add some material.

Last edited by husafreak; 12-16-2013 at 09:24 AM.