Nosewheel well

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Chapter4
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Chapter8
Chapter9
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Chapter 11
Chapter 12
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Chapter 15
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Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
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Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25

The paper template you see I made by placing a large sheet of paper over my cutout, then taped it down, then crawled under the plane and traced the exact shape of the cutout. Then, transferred the pattern to the foam block.

This pic should be before the above pic. Anyhoo, to get this, I retracted the nosegear, and put ONE piece of foam (rectangle shaped) between F22 and inst. panel, right next to the gear. Then took a fat sharpie, and held it level, and traced about 3/8 above the strut, and tire going aft. NOTE: When you get to the back, the tire will be MORE aft when fully retracted, than it is when it is positioned with the aft tire quadrant even with the bottom of the fuse, so make more room when you trace the back, vertical area. 3M super77 spray adhesive works great to join the blocks of foam.

Here, all I had to do was make sure the bottom (top) of this foam block was perp to the side, and I ran it through the bandsaw, following the paper template transfer lines.

Verifying perpendicularity for bandsaw cuts.

The above shot, I had managed to cut the aft end too narrow. But my band saw cuts were so nice, I just grabbed that scrap, and glued it back in place.

I taped the plug with box tape for a smooth inside, and tacked it to the table with some 5 minute epoxy (with standoffs). I plan to micro the inside of my wheel well for smooth finish.

Top View

After 3 bid layup

I was so happy with such a perfect fit. I just 5 minuted the plug in place, and then started the 2 ply bid tape layups.

NOTE: After tightening my axle bolt, my wheel wobbled. This is because the two aluminum axle spacers were too long. The plans say you might have to file them down. I put them on my lathe and removed .005 at a time from each side, each time re-assembling and tightening the bolt, checking for wobble, and to see if the bearings were rotating in the races and not around the spacer. Finally, after removing .016 from each side -.032 total, the wheel had no side to side wobble and the bearings rotated in their races.

I bought a bunch of these small ziplock baggies from McMaster Carr on the web. (cheap) Mix up some micro, put it in the bag with a craft stick, cut the bottom corner of the bag off, and you have yourself a nice inside corner bead applicator.

When I put the wheel well in place, the glass didn't match the cutout in the area you see above. No problem. I just cut out the glass, folded some aluminum foil about 18-20 plies for stiffness, and taped it in place on the inside of the fuselage. Then laid in 3 plies of bid. You can see the foil in the lower photo, with the bid in place. After that dried, I repeated it for the other side.

Starting to finish the well. I used 410 microlight. A west system product. It sands easy. The Fein sander just fit in here, so the sides were easy to sand. Some of it is not too much fun to sand as you can imagine.

Here is the urethane lip to prevent air from spoiling off the aft edge, causing drag.

Email -- Jay Hegemann