I started off this morning meeting Guy out at his hangar to start the task of reinforcing his right gear leg, that has had a persistent issue with brake heat warping it outwards, causing even more heat issues once the brake rotor contacts the heat shield.

We’ve deduced from a few data points that his ol’ skool football wheel pants are definitely exacerbating the heat issue, since after the first repair things were pretty good until the wheel pants went back on.

So before doing any radical or high cost fix actions (i.e. new gear bow or an aluminum “sock”) I proposed we attempt a reinforcement of the gear leg —after yet another heating and repositioning inward— with a good number of mixed plies of BID and UNI using a high temp resin to help resist any heat damage.  These plies will not only serve to reinforce the gear leg that has had a few cycles of heat⇒outboard, heat⇒inboard, but as a physical insulation to the generated heat.

I started at the top (~10″ up) with a single ply of BID, then starting an inch down from that a double wrap of UNI @ 30°, then an inch down from that a single ply of BID, then yet another double wrap of UNI biased 30° the opposite direction of the first, and then a final wrap of BID an inch down from that.  So 7 plies minimum, with maybe another ply or two one side or the other depending on where the glass wrap ended.  I then peel plied the layup.

After lunch we came back to the hangar, and with the hot days we’ve still been having the layup was in a nice “green” state of cure.  This allowed me to fairly easily razor trim the glass from the lower gear leg where the brake caliper notch is located, as well as along the very bottom of the gear leg.  We then left it to cure for a few days until we get back to it.

I’ll note that in addition to the added glass on this gear leg, since Guy has Cleveland wheels and brakes, the rotors are just uncomfortably close to the gear leg, especially with a heat shield in place.  To help remedy this issue, I’m going to machine a 1/4″ thick spacer to kick the entire wheel assembly outboard and off the gear leg just a bit.  This will also allow us to put a thicker (0.063″ vs 0.02″) heat shield in place that also covers more of the brake rotor to help block the radiated heat.  We’ll be installing these spacers and new heat shields on both wheels to keep them symmetric.

Back in my shop, I got to playing “musical chairs” in moving stuff around and out (canard back in house) to allow me to wheel in my old taller wing dolly… that the wing will sit on upside down as I finish both the bottom side of the wing-winglet fairing and the underside outboard wing/winglet micro finishing.

You can see that I was able to move the nose of the bird away from the plasma cutting table and the whole bird back a few feet to allow me enough space to wheel in the old wing dolly.  That being said, things are still tight back there.

I should note that a bit before my musical chairs shenanigans, I pulled the peel ply off the top lip underside layups of both the left wing and left strake.  I then trimmed the glass a bit and added some flocro along each lip edge where there were slight chips and imperfections.  I then left those to cure. (no pics)

And here we have the left wing inverted on the old, taller wing dolly.  Again, I’ll get to work on the wing-winglet intersection fairing and micro-finishing starting tomorrow.

Yep, slowly pressing forward.