I just put the heat lamps on last night, pilot door. We'll see how much that does. I tried this in the winter and had no success. Now that Pennsylvania's in a heat wave it might work better. How close can I expect to get it?
[2] I checked the tow-in of my wheels and found the copilot wheel tows in 1/2 inch and the pilot wheel tows in over 5 inches. Please correct me if I'm measuring incorrectly: I leveled the plane; dropped a plum line from the nose bolt hole and the center of the firewall; snapped a line on the floor to connect the dots; drew a perpendicular line on the floor through the nose bolt position; strung a tight line along the horizontal center of the wheel rim and brought it forward until it crossed the forward perpendicular line; measured at the wheel and at the nose and found the differences listed above.
I assume that I can adjust the 5 inches with a washer between the forward edge of the axle and the gear leg (RG) then build a microglass pad. The manual says "about one inch of tow in"--how close does this need to be? Also, I do not have my second strake finished nor the engine on. Does this effect my measurements and should I wait until these are in place before making any modifications?
Thanks,
Jack Reeder
Sdt RG E
N220VE
NMFlyer1@aol.com wrote:
Well I've read the recent posts on door seals, but I'm not quite that far
along. Tonight I fit the doors (with hinges clecoed in place on the
Micro-pads) into the fuselage. It still amazes me how poorly some of these
things fit at first trial. My fuselage halves were out by 3/4 of an inch,
but took only a few hours tweaking to fit them very well, so I know it really
isn't as bad as it seems at first. Here's my question ( or should I say
reasurance request):My doors fit fairly well up in the hinge area and down the door about
10-12". after that both doors dip inward ( what Mark says is a no-no on the
video) and then both dip back outward. At the same time they twist, forward
edge out & rear edge in, about 3/8" each way. I know that you can't do too
much tweaking, heating, cussing, bending, etc until the hinges are attached
to the fuselage. The manual also says to bondo the door into position before
drilling the hinge attach holes and making the fuselage Micro-pads. The
problem is that the door fits so poorly, how do you know which position is
best? I think the twist will be fairly easy to fix, and the forward edge out
should also be easy. It seems like I almost have to recurve the doors to get
that center dip out of there (it's about 1/4" in in the center, flush on top,
and twisted on the bottom),
Just thought I'd check in and see if anyones doors were as out of whack as
mine, and what was done to fix that. I have read about the Heat lamps to fix
some, but these seem pretty far out of curve.
Thanks for the advice in advance,
Kurt Winker
173 FGE
Chevy 4.3L Alum. V-6