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I want to give fellow IV-P builders a "heads-up" on some serious landing
gear issues that I've discovered during my work on my main gear and nose
gear:
First, when I was attaching my main gear hydraulic cylinders, I was having
trouble getting things to line up. I was really concerned that perhaps
some machining was done by the factory to the Rack housing/ Support arm assembly
(also called Assembly A in the build manual) because there was some writing on
the support arms as I had received them in my kit. After a couple of days
of head scratching, I found that my two Assembly A's were not symmetrical and
the reason was that they were both assembled incorrectly by the
factory. One was actually missing critical GM468 spacers that act as
bushings (ref: page 19-72 of IV-P manual).
Once I got Lancair to send me the missing spacers, and after I rebuilt the
Assembly A's, I got everything to fit correctly and was able to finally align
and adjust the rack and pinions. I urge all IV-P builders to check
that your Assembly A's are rigged correctly. Both of mine were not.
Second, after I completed the work on my main gear and doors, I started on
the nose gear and was immediately confounded when I couldn't attach the nose
gear hydraulic actuator (HC-08) between the nose gear strut and over-center
linkage. With the correct rod end on the hydraulic actuator, there
was simply no way that it would attach and be able to have the nose gear be
"down and locked".
At this point, I contacted Robert Williams at Lancair and he suggested that
I might have the wrong hydraulic actuator. A lot of e-mail and pictures
flew back and forth from me to him, and we decided that the problem was not
with the actuator but probably with a mis-welded tab on the
over-center linkage. He sent me a replacement
linkage. After I received it, it was obvious that my original
and the replacement were exact copies. Back to square one...
After talking with the knowledgeable Brad Simmons up in Tennessee, he
suggested that perhaps the nose gear pivot blocks were incorrectly
installed. Bingo! After more communication between me and
Lancair as well as more e-mailed pics, Robert sent me two replacement nose gear
pivot blocks (also called: bearing blocks).
I disassembled the nose gear strut from the engine mount and set the proper
strut angle (.5 - 1 deg fwd) and checked retraction clearances into the wheel
well. Having the pivot blocks clamped tightly to the engine mount and
trying to do a one-man clamp, retract, re-clamp, check strut angle, etc. without
the help of my undertrained and grumpy shop assistant (read: wife), was not for
the faint of heart. But once I attached the new bearing blocks, everything
finally started coming together and I was finally able to get to work on the
doors.
In conclusion: please check your kits to see that you don't have the same
problems that I had. When the factory person installed the nose gear
in my fast-build kit, as well as the main gear rack assembly's, apparently there
was no quality assurance involved to ensure that the job was done
correctly. I picked my kit up in April 2003, so if you're in the same
timeframe, please check both of these issues closely.
I would like to mention that when I could get a hold of Robert Williams,
and later Ross, at the factory, they were always willing to try and get both of
these issues resolved. Robert was always insistent that he would replace
and send to me whatever was needed to fix the problem. This
was greatly appreciated!
Anyway, I hope this "heads-up" helps.
Ed Kary
IV-P
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