This was unexpected. I was asked if I had used the plans AN960 washer, which I had or if I used Wide area washer, AN970’s for the main landing gear support brackets. I hadn’t heard of this issue!

Apparently the soft spuce these are attached through gets crushed and some main gears have become loose over time. Especially those operating at higher than plans weights. I guess a heavy landing even once wouldn’t help either.

Reluctantly, over a week I’ve router down to these bolts and removed them carefully with some difficulty. Then I routed out a wide enough area for the new much larger washers and floxed them in. Then I’ve made foam plugs, microed them in and finished off with a thin layer of micro on top.

This retro fix has added a small amount of weight and slowed down other work for a few days. It may however have saved me doing it years from now and on a finished plane this would be a much bigger job. So a little preventative maintenance for a situation of loose grear I hope will now not happen.

I still have a clean up to do to get the micro flush. You can see I’ve peel plyed the bog which helps prevent air in the filler. I’m sure there will be other pics when the spar goes in to show how tidy the wounds in the side are.

Remove old bolts

Foam plugs

Micro fill clean up