Andre stopped by today and helped me fit the engine mount and main gear.  I used a couple of long Bessey clamps to clamp from the vertical side tubes of the mount to the center section.  I then used a dead blow mallet to adjust the mount until it was evenly spaced all around, then tightened the clamps to prevent the mount from moving.  I used a 3/8″ drill bit and drilled the holes in the firewall.  There are six holes in total, and all pass through beefy structure on the backside of the firewall to transmit the engine loads into the rest of the airframe.

Here is the engine mount all drilled with four of the bolts installed temporarily.  Now that the mount is in place, I marked where the gear legs will interfere with the lower firewall flange.  I used a carbide burr in my die grinder and removed the material that was visible through the landing gear tube.

I slipped the landing gear in the mount and with a little muscling, I got them all the way in so that I could slip an AN5 bolt part way into the hole at the top.  The gear legs have bearing surfaces inside that only touch the engine mount at the top of bottom of the outer tube.  There is a single bolt at the top of the tube that holds the gear legs on.  It doesn’t seem like much, but I’ve never heard of one of these failing, so it must be plenty strong.

The flanges for the two center holes in the engine mount don’t touch the firewall.  This is a pretty common problem since the engine mount can distort slightly during welding.  The fix is simple and requires fabricating little spacers so that the bolts can be tightened without flexing the mount.  These are pretty thin (0.016″ and 0.032″).  I took the mount off, deburred the holes and cleaned up the shavings.  I reinstalled the mount with the proper hardware, but then realized that I don’t have an appropriate torque wrench for these bolts.  These need to be tightened to 160-190 in-lbs, but my smaller torque wrench only goes to 150 in-lbs and my bigger one starts at 20 ft-lbs (240 in-lbs).  I’ll probably use an extension on my smaller torque wrench instead of buying an intermediate torque wrench since these are the only AN6 bolts on the airplane.  My current torque wrenches can torque AN5 (and smaller) as well as AN7 (and larger) bolts.

No pictures tonight, but I finished the finish kit inventory and sorted all of the hardware into my storage bins.  No missing items fortunately, and just one backordered item (gear leg fairings).  I got most of the large pieces put away, but I’m still looking for a place to store the canopy until I’m ready for it.  Jenn’s not liking my idea of storing it in our daughter’s room or on our guest bed.

I fit the brake flanges to the gear legs.  It was only after I took this picture that I realized the bolt had to come back out to fit the caliper mounting bracket.  This required reaming the holes in the mounting brackets (which were slightly undersize) out to 1/4″ for the 1/4-20 socket head bolts.  I have no idea why these aren’t standard AN hardware.  In fact, the nut looks like something you’d find at the hardware store, but this is what Van’s specifies.

I reamed the caliper holes out with my 1/4″ chucking reamer for the AN4 bolts that hold the caliper mounting bracket to the brake bracket and attached in with some AN4-6A bolts.  I would have used AN4-5A bolts except that I didn’t have any.  The plans specify AN4-11A bolts because these also go through some spacers and the wheel pant mounting bracket.  I’ll do the phase 1 flights without that bracket installed though since it’s prone to cracking without the wheel pant in place, so this will probably be how this stays all the way to first flight.

I lubricated the gear leg with some AeroShell 33MS grease (the only grease I’m using for the entire airplane), and slipped it into place.

I installed the AN5-21A bolts ad torqued them down.  AN5-20A would have been better since I had to use two washers, but I don’t have any.

Finally, I repacked the wheel bearings with fresh AeroShell 33MS grease and mounted the wheel and brake caliper.  Nothing’s been final torqued at this point.

I fit the right main gear leg tonight and packed the right wheel bearings.  The tailwheel spring has not been installed yet, so the tail is still sitting on a sawhorse.  The plane is only a few inches taller than it was when the entire fuselage was on sawhorses since I intentionally set them high because of how tall I am.  Access to the inside while leaning over the longerons is still totally fine.  The plane is also much more stable this way.  Although the sawhorses were steel, the legs could move back and forth slightly, so this is a definite improvement.