Landing Gear, Part 1

It seems as if every new sub-assembly begins with the priming...and the landing gear is no exception.  In this instance though, I am only priming the faying surfaces as shown below.

Here are the other cast of characters, mostly assembled (tubes installed and inflated) and in no particular order: main wheels (outside face, inside face showing the disk), nose wheel and in the foreground, the calipers, wheel bearings and finally, the axles with nuts and cotter pins.

The RV-12 wheel bearings are a different beast from conventional bearings and packing them with their preferred grease is done, according to Andy at Matco,  "old school."  That means a wad of grease in the palm of the hand and work it into the rollers until you're tired of doing it!  I chose to use the synthetic Mobil 28 grease.

Packing the bearings...

With that task accomplished, it was time to begin the gear leg assembly work.  First up is the installation of the outboard wear and doubler plates.  Below is a shot of the wear and doubler plates partially installed.

Applying grease to the faying surfaces of the fittings/gear leg prior to bolting them together.

Here is where the inboard and outboard fittings live - no gear leg yet installed.

And the next two shots show the right gear leg in position and captured by the outboard and inboard fittings.

The requisite groveling on the garage (hangar) floor getting everything into position and readying for final torquing.

Getting the slack out of the outboard fittings with my stubby wrench prior to final torque.

Now the fun: final torquing of the outboard fitting bolts.  Note the ingenious use of a stubby wrench, a socket extension, a 3/8 to 1/2 socket adapter and the torque wrench.  I wished I had thought of this, but credit goes to the original RV-12 Renaissance Man, none other than Mr. Joe Gores.  And you thought he was just an electrical wizard!

This setup of wrenches made the job of getting the desired torque a complete snap.  Kudos again to Joe Gores for his clever approach.

 

Here are a couple of shots of the final positioning of the center section attach points.
 

And finally, the pictures below illustrate the fruit of our labor - the installed main gear legs!

 

Canopy Installation, Part 5

After the foam had dried the shaping process began in earnest.  I found the handheld sureform planer worked fairly well, followed by some 150 grit sand paper.

I opted to not only put a top triangular fillet of resin and flox along the foam, but I mixed up another batch with less flox and used it as a top coat to the entire exposed surface of the foam.  Once cured, I roughed it up a bit to promote adhesion to the fiberglass fairing.

 Of note in the picture above and now below is the black, trim along the base of the forward bow of the canopy.  As I plan on bonding the fairing onto the canopy, I do not want to see the random pattern of the silicone product through my canopy.  As mentioned in the previous installment, I applied several coats of Rustoleum's Painter's Touch 2X paint + primer rattle can to the outside of the base of the canopy.  It turned out perfect, although I don't know how well it will wear over time.

Next shots are of the Viking Shield temporarily installed on the canopy and frame.  I spent several long sessions with a heat gun trying to get the shape of the fairing to lay "tight" against the frame and fuselage skin.  I am not completely satisfied and have begun purchasing supplies to do the manual Van's approach.  Worst case, I will have an extra fairing...best case: I will learn more about working with fiberglass.  Stay tuned for that result.

Canopy Installation, Part 4

Another cool idea that Van's came up with for the RV-12 is a nice, lightweight glareshield.  A bubble canopy and a complete glass panel on a sunny day can be a recipe for visibility issues of the instrumentation.  After seeing one installed on VAF.net, I had to have one.  I ordered it and was not disappointed.  As an added bonus, it appears to be finished in the exact same Sherwin Williams JetFlex Blue Black color of my interior.....so much so that I am not going to touch the nice exterior finish.  I did apply 3 coats of a nice flat black on the unfinished interior side of the glareshield.  I used Rustoleum's Painter's Touch 2X paint + primer rattle can, which is advertised as "also bonds to plastic!".  I was able to get a nice finish with that paint.  As I will document later, I also used it on the inside of the plexiglass canopy...but more about that at the proper time.  The photos below show the nice form and fit of the glareshield along the front canopy bow.

The glareshield will be fastened with the front canopy bow's #6 countersunk screws, washers and nuts, which will also be holding the canopy in place.  I opted to NOT use rivets.

 Next up on the canopy install was the manufacture and installation of the canopy guide blocks.  In another post on VAF, an RV-12 builder remarked that he had shaped (rounded corners, edges) his guide blocks with his router.  As it sounded like a good idea, I broke out my home brewed router table rig and set about to finish-shaping my guide blocks.

Scary tool that router with its bit turning at the "speed of heat" about 1/4 inch from one's digits!

In the end, I finished with all digits still attached and two nicely shaped canopy guide blocks.

Below is clearer picture of my rig with the set up I used to do the job.

The guide blocks were used to guide a tap to thread the holes that were drilled into the roll bar.  After tapping the holes and then cleaning up, the guide blocks were fastened to the roll bar.

I will have to plead ignorance at this point and say that I don't remember if I have previously mentioned my use of the Viking Shield.  The shield is simply a pre-made gelcoated, fiberglass trim piece that Viking Aircraft Engines sells to alleviate the RV-12 builder of that task beginning on page 34-14 of the builder's manual.  I opted to purchase one.

To be honest, I was disappointed with the lack of rigidity of the trim piece as it probably has only 2 layers of glass plus the gelcoat.  I was impressed with the pristine gelcoat finish which would completely eliminate any finish work getting the fiberglass part to the paint -ready stage.

I was determined to give this piece a fair shake (as opposed to just doing the prescribed manual layup) so my first order of business was to attempt to bring it up to my standards of at least 4 layers of glass.  Pictured below are a few shots of the supplemental glassing process.  I will confess to the fact that I simply used some cheap polyester resin and some 6 ounce glass cloth purchased from the local auto repair shop.  I did squeegee as much of the excess resin from the lay up as possible to keep it light.  The final trimmed piece of which I don't yet have a picture turned out nice.  The modified fairing's rigidity is now what I wanted it to be.

The next step in the process involved the trimming of the two blocks of canopy foam....and the subsequent bonding to the forward canopy frame.  Below is a picture of the trimmed foam block, nearly ready for bonding to the canopy frame.

Checking for fit of the foam block on the canopy frame - looks acceptable.

For bonding the canopy foam to the frame, I opted to use an epoxy resin in lieu of the low-tech polyester resin.  The Gflex epoxy resin is a West System product that I purchased at our local West Marine store.  Next to it is the 1 pound bag of flox (chopped cotton fibers) purchased from Aircraft Spruce.  The epoxy resin mixes at a 1:1 ratio, and the digital scale makes it a no-brainer of a process.  The builder's manual states to add enough flox "until the mixture is just thick enough that it won't pour when the mixing cup is tipped."  Armed with that info, I added small increments of flox to the resin mixture until it seemed to be thick enough....like a thin paste.

 After the canopy foam blocks were coated with the epoxy/flox mixture, it was time to let the duct tape do its thing and hold in place until the next day.  Next up will be the sanding/contouring of the foam.

 

Canopy Installation, Part 3

Part 2 of the canopy installation installment ended with my unsuccessful attempt to repair a hairline crack in the forward cross tube of the canopy frame.  After I broke that externally sleeved repair, I planned on implementing an internal solid rod sleeve.  I had the common sense to also order some tubing as well that could also serve as an internal sleeve...and that is what I ended up going with as shown below.  The first picture shows the 4.5 inch internal sleeve drilled and cleco'd half way in place.  I did use countersunk blind rivets as shown in the next photo.

A final shot of the repaired butt weld area that is no longer welded!  I would add that the forward canopy bow now fits perfectly with respect to the instrument panel and provides the prescribed clearances.

Forward canopy bow with correct clearance from instrument panel.

View looking aft of the forward canopy bow.

Once the debacle of the broken butt weld was behind me, it was a quick matter to proceed with the fitting of the canopy to the frame and fuselage.  The first few photos below show the canopy laying in place prior to duct taping into final position, holding the lengthwise and lateral dimensions as called forth in the plans.

 
Now visible is the blue painter's tape running along the forward and aft canopy frames.  The forward bow will be marked for drilling by pressing the tape onto the bow by pushing on the canopy so as to leave an impression.

 

Next, the canopy was secured with duct tape into final position with the aforementioned measurements in place.

I was not satisfied with the impressions left on the forward canopy bow with the blue painter's tape so I ended up switching to traditional masking tape and was much happier with the results.  Below, I am drilling the #40 holes in the canopy bow at the prescribed 2-inch intervals.
 

 
After pre-drilling the forward canopy bow, it was time to re-install the canopy and drill the plexiglass. Shown below is a shot of the drilling of the rear canopy bow.

And finally, the canopy gets to perform its porcupine impression with a myriad of clecos.

Next up were the canopy skirts, which get dimensionally positioned along the length of the canopy with some duct tape and then the drilling and cleco'ing process resumes.