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Matt Dralle's RV-8 Project
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Date: 5-27-2009
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Number of Hours: 1.00
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Manual Reference:
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Brief Description: Wheel & Brake Installation - Part 1
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Now that the landing gear are finally installed, it was time to turn my attention to installing the wheel pant mounts, axles, brakes, wheels, and tires. I'm happy to report that the installation went pretty well, actually, and you have to admit that all of those machined parts look pretty cool.
I started with the left and right wheel pant mounts. These are made of .125" 2024-T3 and are very accurately punched, drilled, and formed. Basically they only required taking a big file and rounding all of the edges off, then putting a light coat of primer on them. There were also the outside wheel pant mounts which are smaller and simply screw into the main wheel nut. Mostly just filing off the corners and then priming on these as well.
The wheel bearings were well packed at the factory, so that was one step I didn't have to do. I split the wheels in half and mounted the tube inside the tire, then sandwiched the whole thing together and bolted the wheel back together. Inflated the tires to 25psi, let it out, and then reinflated a couple of times to get the tubes seated correctly. The axle, brake, and wheel pant mount all bolt onto the gear leg with four 1/4" bolts and nuts. The fit was nearly perfect and it wasn't hard to insert the bolts at all.
Since the Grove gear have the brake line rifle-drilled down the center of the leg, there is a 1/4" pipe fitting on the bottom of the gear leg. After some thought and a couple of different tries, I opted to use a right-angle fitting on the bottom of the leg, and a 45-degree fitting on the brake caliper. The Van's VA-102 pre-fabbed hose fits PERFECTLY around the brake. The VA-102 is normally used on the FWF for the fuel pressure line. Using the VA-102 seemed a lot better than a hard aluminium tube line with AN fittings. The vibration after a while would surely crack the tube. The flex lines should last a long time.
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L&R Wheel Pant Mounts
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L&R Wheel Pant Mounts - Ready For Prime
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L&R Wheel Pant Mounts - Axle Nut Mounts
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Copyright © 2008-2024 Matt Dralle. All Rights Reserved.
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