I had a landing mishap with my P-51 over the weekend that resulted
in a collapsed retract. I searched this thread for "retract repair" without
much results, so I thought it would be worthwhile to document my repair
for future refererence.

The retracts are Robart 605s




Retract rail broken out




Damage to retract mounting plate




Always save the little peices because they fit back together like a jigsaw puzzle.




Balsa / Retract Rails repaired with CA / epoxy




Retract fitted in place. Note the fracture line. I tried unsuccessfully to
repair the fracture line this with plastic cement. Used epoxy instead.




Steel plate fabricated, bonded & fastened in place to reinforce fracture line




Repair completed, close it up


Hopefully this works. The repaired retract is secured in place very rigidly.
I'll follow up after my next landing to say whether it worked.

Post Flight report:

This repair has worked so far. I've made 4 successful
landings with no signs of components coming loose.

Glad to see it's working, but if it was my plane I would replace it. That would make me too nervous.