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Ahh, yes, the main gear door cover for the IV.

In the Old Days, this was a terrible problem.  Some things never change, I guess.

The problem was that you needed the door opening cut to install the landing gear.  In order to cut the door opening, you had to know the swing of the landing gear, and the angle of the wheel assemblies as they entered the opening.  Due to some major screw up, each wheel assembly coming from the factory was not identical.  Thus, after you had cut the gear door opening to accept the swing of the wheels and had thought you were done, it was found that the castor and camber of the wheel assemblies themselves needed huge shim corrections, which tilted the wheels, and locked them up as they tried to enter the original openings.....The openings got bigger and bigger, necessitating major redo's on the gear doors themselves.  In my case, we had to add 2.7 degrees or so in both castor and camber to the wheels to correct a terrible splay, and when the wheels then approached the gear door opening, the shift in tilt of the wheels necessitated an inch or more of rasping on the original openings.

My point is----if the factory seems to be supplying pre assembled gear doors that are too small, or that don't have the clearance, get the airplane on its wheels and check your castor and camber to see if you need to adjust the wheel assemblies with shims before you continue on to final fit your gear doors to their holes.  It may save you from rebuilding the doors a second time.

David Jones, Pecatonica, Illinois

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