Original Posted By: Michael King
You did just fine, Ed. This is going to happen again and again since assomeone posted before it is the nature of welding tubing. When I did mine Icut the fishmouth out of the tip of the vee and after trial fitting andfinding the vee to tight, bent the gear manually back into the position Iwanted and then welded in the axle tube on a jig. After that was done itstayed in the right position.Steve EldredgeIT ServicesBrigham Young University> -----Original Message-----> Alan Swanson> Sent: Tuesday, October 05, 1999 9:02 PM> To: Pietenpol Discussion> Subject: Landing gear welding question>>> To the group,> I am building a split axle landing gear almost to the plans.> After much> putzing, I got the angle just right so the hinges that attach to the> fuselage are the right distance. I then tack welded them to> just the right> dimension. Then, you guessed it- when I did the final> welding of the two> pieces of the legs together, the angle between them> contracted to the point> where the hinges are 5/8 inch too close together.>> I put some threaded rod with nuts between the hinges to put> some spreading> force between them. I then heated the joint as evenly as I> could to just> between red and orange. Not enough to melt the weld, but to soften> slightly. Actually, I think most of the adjustment was in the> "point" of the> joint, not in the crotch where most of the filler metal is. I> then spread> the legs slowly to the correct point. It wasn't much of an> adjustment in> the weld joint.>> My question- did I do a bad thing to the weld joint? My> rationale was that> I wasn't doing anything different from when we stress relieve> a cluster> joint. Is this correct?>> Thanks for the help.>> Al Swanson> Trying to get legs on this bird.>>________________________________________________________________________________