ORIGINAL: damifino
My wheel panst brackets broke while on the bench I let it go for awhile untill I finnished most of the assemb
Just out of curiosity, how were the wheel pants brackets attached to the landing gear?
The bracket consists of a flat piece of metal to which was somehow "attached" -- if we can use that term to describe what was done -- a (plated) brass wheel collar. The wheel collar was to go on the gear and be held on the axle w/ a 2-56 setscrew. The metal plate is drilled for 2 4-40 bolts that screw into two blind nuts mounted on a piece of plywood glassed to the inside of the wheel pant. Quick, simple and easy, right? Attaching the wheel pants'll take about 90 seconds, right? Not so fast; on a large number of the assemblies, or maybe all of them, the attachment of the wheel collar to the metal plate is defective and so far as I know, no one has been able to figure out how to make it stay permanently, at least not without welding and/or machine shop fabrication.
Cox told me that on the prototype, the manfacturer did the assembly correctly, but tried to cut corners on the production kits. Hence the current problem. Cox has no suggestions for fixing the problem other than to suggest, lamely, that we buy a Sullivan or Dubro attachment. But Cox has said that the problem will be corrected on the next run of kits. So far as I'm concerned, what Cox should do is either get the manufacturer to make up a bunch correctly, or have a machine shop fabricate something, and get them to those of us who bought the first run of kits. Aparently that's not going to happen and those of us w/ the first run are simply out of luck, so far as getting any help from Cox is concerned.
I too had some other issues w/ the kit, including that neither the rudder or elevators had "hardpoints" to bolt on the control horns. If you follow the manual, you'll be mounting the horns to balsa. So I scabbed some ply mounting plates in the surfaces. But when I reported that to Cox, the reaction was disbelief....
Al
Brotherhood #66