REFLECTOR: Nose Gear Doors

[Bob Jackson (Jax Tech)]

Paul,

 

An alternative to filling the gaps is to bend the doors to fit the fuselage
opening.  When we first fit our gull wing doors to the fuselage, the doors
on both sides did not follow the exact contour of the fuselage, and the
bottom corners of the door stuck out and in ~1/2" from the fuselage surface.

 

We had great success in building a 'jig' involving 3/8" threaded rods,
threaded through temporary holes cut into the door beams, and through 2x4's
temporarily fixed to the insides and outsides of the fuselage for leverage.
By turning nuts on the threaded rod we could 'spring' the doors into proper
alignment.  The next step then was to heat the door (multiple hot air guns
and heat lamps until the door fiberglass was almost too hot to touch) so
that the epoxy would 'flow' slightly and the door would bend slightly and
assume the new desired shape that was flush with the fuselage skin.

 

I think you only can do this 'trick' a few times before the epoxy begins to
'work harden' and will no longer re-flow and bend.  We learned
trial-and-error that we needed to 'over-spring' the bending corrections
(e.g., if we needed to move the door in 1/2", then using the nuts on the
threaded rod actually bend it in 1" while heating it up).  Once we heated it
up with something like twice the correction needed, once it cooled down
after a few hours and we removed the rig, the door would loose about half of
the correction and spring back to 'about right'.  One or two cycles of this
and our doors now fit perfectly!

 

This doesn't seem to be a technique that too many people know about, but it
worked great for us and I think it should also work on you nose gear doors.

Good luck!

 

Bob Jackson

Turbo-Cross Country Velocity XL-RG

N2XF

 

  _____  

From: reflector-bounces at tvbf.org [mailto:reflector-bounces at tvbf.org] On
Behalf Of Paul Folkes
Sent: Wednesday, August 21, 2013 8:36 PM
To: Velocity Aircraft Owners and Builders list
Subject: REFLECTOR: Nose Gear Doors

 

Hi all,

 

I'm looking for some advice from the collective wisdom.  I am working on the
nose gear doors.  I have an older, fast-build kit and have to make my own
flange (no problem there). My problem is the hole cut out by the factory is
not square and there are a few dings and chips from moves from garage to
garage to hangar by the previous owner. This all means that there are some
uneven and quite large (up to 1/4 inch) gaps around the pre-moulded doors
that I need to fill and reshape to get the hole square with nice straight
edges.  What is the best process and material for this?  I am thinking to
cover the door piece in duct tape or saran wrap and hot glue or bondo it
into place, wipe cabosil into the gaps around the door, and then sand square
when cured.  Any comments, please?

 

Thanks,

 

Paul Folkes

XLRG

VH-VVX

building but a looooong way to go.

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