More landing gear work
Time goes by, and I have the occasional hour here and there to work on things. I've sort of entered the drudge zone: fabricating the bungee strut assembly.
I'm not fully convinced I want to use the as-designed system. But I'm interested enough in getting the fuselage on wheels to go ahead with the materials I have.
So, a few photos of the drawn out process of making bungee struts.
First reinforcements welded on.
Then drilling 1/4 inch holes for bolts to slip through a slider that is supposed to hit stops in inside the inner strut.
After all this welding, the outer strut no longer accepted the internal 3/4 sliding strut. So I needed to ream it out. I didn't have a 3/4 reamer, but I did have a 3/4 hole saw and an old hole saw chuck that I could weld to drill extension. After going through lots of cutting oil and wearing down the hole saw to .735", I went to lapping compound and more oil. Eventually I had a free-sliding tube. The word of advice here is to order a 3/4" hand reamer. My excuse was that they were backordered.
Actually, the photo is out of order, but welding on bungee attachments.
Testing the fit and alignment with Walmart bungees
The internal strut has a 1/4" slot through which a bolt goes to a slider inside the strut. So time to try to make slots.
The slider and stops within the internal strut were specified at a certain diameter. Of course, the inner strut material I had was thicker walled 3/4 tubing, and I didn't have a proper tube to fit the smaller diameter. But I did have some thick walled 5/8 tubing that could be turned down. Here is a testing of the fit.
I still need to install the stops and slider, but I wanted to eyeball the travel of the strut.
So, everything seems to be consistent with the plans. I still need to add caps on the bungee attachment ears and also add the internal stops. It seems strong enough, but I'd like to have rubber bumpers in front of the stops. Not enough room to put all this stuff in, though.
I have some nice new bungees. I'm impressed with how stiff they are. As in, I'll have to review those installation videos a few times to make a decent tool for the task.
So, I'll use this set up for now, but I still am noodling variations ranging from simple homemade oleos to some of the fancy suspension systems described on the site. I may end up with several different versions to try out. That is what is cool about experimental building. But it is SLOW, sometimes.