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The other weekend I noticed my left gear leg fairing's bracket was broken. Here is a close up of it. I've never seen a crack where it's been missing a chunk of metal!  The bracket that broke most recently was the left bottom bracket (left). The right left bracket also broke a few months ago (right).  In investigating the right side brackets, I noticed the Right Top bracket was cracking.  When the left top bracket broke, I replaced it with a new bracket made of .063 - I believe I originally made all the brackets out of .040. I decided to make the other remaining brackets out of .063 since they all seem to be failing.  I wanted to beef up how the brackets are attached to the gear leg. It seems that just having a hose clamp on the top "finger" isn't enough. It also is probably putting a lot of load on the bracket. I put a notch in the new brackets in order to add an additional clamp  Here's my solution -- a second "skinnier" clamp installed in the middle of the bracket.  In order to re-align the gear leg fairings, I needed to jack the airplane up level and put some plumb bobs down. One issue with putting the plumb bobs in the front is there isn't a way to easily secure one to the exact centerline int he front of the airplane. The rear is easy because I used the holes for the tailwheel. I decided to put a #50 hole right in the middle. This sure made it easy!  Airplane up and leveled..  I decided to put a hole in the gear leg fairings to allow a screwdriving to tighten the new clamp. This hole will be covered up by the intersection fairings.  Gear leg fairings aligned.  I noticed some rubbing on the bottom of the alternate air door from the cable. I put some UHMW take on the door, hopefully fixing this potential problem.  I was working on my high CHT issue today. The first thing I did was time the MAG and EMAG. The MAG was dead on. The EMAG was off by 2-5 degrees. I doubt this caused a big issue, but it's easy enough to time the EMAG to TDC. I also noticed I had a few spots where air could leak through the plenum. I waxed the baffles and put some high temp RTV in the cracks.  This was a big leak here. I don't know if it has always been here, or if some RTV had fallen/pealed off. This should be dry tomorrow and I will give it a test to see what my CHT temps look like now. 
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Last Modified: October 5, 2024 |