Sorry for the delay, Everyone in the house is sick. But I did get a little done I opened up the wing to let the wheels retract. To do this I lifted the covering with a putty knife and cut the wood away. With a gas engine up front I really don’t need to do this but I wanted to give it a try. Next I need to add some supports on the top surface of the wing so I can cut back the ribs there to get the wheels a little further into the wing.

Lastly I needed to foam the area between the forward LG mount and the LE. The reason for this is to add some surface area to the joints up front. If we look at the stress in our LG mounts while the stress on both is = the aft LG brace is loaded in compression, and the forward LG mount is loaded in Tension. While the stress is = the reaction of most materials to then is quite different. Most materials are twice as strong in compression as in tension. To make our case even worse we use an adhesive to hold the LG mounts in place so any motion allowed in the rails allows them to slowly degrade to a final failure. I’m sure we all have our stories of a picture perfect landing when the gear broke out. That was caused by motion in the system. So I use the foam to hold everything in the forward LG mounts together. More importantly if I have a bad landing the foam will break away from the mounts and the motion will cause foam dust which I will pick up of the floor of the van if I don’t pick it up by looking for it directly after the bad landing. Some times I’m just not sure so I pull the mechanisms out and hit all the seams (epoxy & foam with thin CA.

Anyway I’ve included a picture of the holes I use to put the foam in. I’m showing the one that did not have foam over flowing out that hole. If you decide to do this to your plane the first few times you use this stuff use two holes one for pouring and one for overflow. I used one hole because I know I have to keep this hole free/open. If it should plug pressure will build as the foam is expanding and blow the wing apart.

Joe