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Replacement gear

P

PeteS

I'm New Here
Our beautiful RV4 has a soft LH gear leg and some cracking in the firewall. Our RV expert engineer has pointed out this can be a problem with this type operating on a grass strip.

Our intention is to replace the gear with long legs - and of course deal with the firewall.

Can anyone offer advice on ordering the parts, ie long gear legs, engine frame, fairings, etc? Other advice welcome from anyone who has made the same change to their RV4 gear.

Thanks in anticipation.
Pete UK
 
Gear

Kitplanes a couple of months ago had a detailed article on repairing the fuselage fittings. When you say soft gear do you mean that the gear leg is bending permanently from its original angle. That would be caused by improper heat treating of the gear leg.
Harmon Lange at Langair Machining in Oregon is the source for the gear legs. You can google his contact info.
Long gear or short, the gear leg itself will take an almost unlimited amount of abuse. The fuselage fittings are the problem. There have been problems on at least one occasion with improper heat treat on a batch of gear legs, but that was a long time ago.
 
Yes. The gear leg is bent outwards and back enough to be obvious when viewed from most angles.
 
I believe the engine mount used for the long vs. short gear is different, in that the angle of the gear leg changes when going to the longer gear. If you use the same engine mount with longer legs, the wheels move aft and you'll change the ground handling significantly. The long gear mount tilts them forward to keep the wheels in the same place as before relative to your CG.

You may already know this, but just in case... You didn't mention changing an engine mount.
 
Snowflake said:
I believe the engine mount used for the long vs. short gear is different, in that the angle of the gear leg changes when going to the longer gear. If you use the same engine mount with longer legs, the wheels move aft and you'll change the ground handling significantly. The long gear mount tilts them forward to keep the wheels in the same place as before relative to your CG.

You may already know this, but just in case... You didn't mention changing an engine mount.
Click to expand...

He mentioned replacing the engine frame.... I assume it's the same as what we call engine mount, but yes, what you said is correct. The mount ( frame) for the longer legs is different.
 
Hi PeteS,

Where are you in the UK? We broke the engine mount (frame) on our RV-4 and are in the process of replacing it and the firewall at Gloucester. For various reasons it has been a slow job but also because the new mount did not line up with the holes from the old mount so some fuselage brackets have had to be changed.

I should be at the airfield this weekend so will get the paperwork to tell you what parts we ordered. The engine mount and gear legs come together as one matched sub-kit.

Cheers, Alan.
 
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