Dear Lancarians!

Another question from down under. Sorry, it’s a little complex to describe, but I will be as brief as I can.

Firstly a bit of history. I purchased my LN 360 kit partly built some 9 years ago, which came with the original undercarriage. I have since fitted the outback gear, which is what is pictured in the attached photographs. In fitting the outback gear, and, not counting the airframe changes required, I simply removed the old gear and installed the outback gear. All seemed well until I tried retracting the main gears. When doing so (fortunately only by hand) I found the head of both the left and right side AN6-32A bolts which secure the over-centre links to the gear legs (see fig 5-2 on page 5-6 of the FBM), were striking the GM4 alignment bracket as the leg retracted into the well. After some thought and discussion with local builders, I decided to remove .090” from the Over-centre Linkage Boss (Ref Fig 5-22-2 page 5-31). This would move the bolt head rearwards, and hopefully give me the required clearance. This it did. However, the reduced space between the AN970-6 washer and the GM1 weldment (i.e. the gear leg itself) compressed the coils of the rat trap springs, restricting their movement, and resulted in permanently bending the arms of the springs such that they would not now stay engaged with the over-centre link when the gear was retracted. Not good! So I installed a couple of washers on the Over-centre bosses to return the space for the spring to the original specification.

At this stage, the only solution which works, at least whilst it is on the ground, is to grind down the heads of the bolts, as you will see in the photographs I have done, to ensure clearance. However, I am not sure that this is an acceptable solution in terms of structural integrity of the head of the bolts. The load on this bolt I imagine will be mostly in shear, so is it an acceptable solution? I am not an engineer so I don’t know how to tell.

So I am interested to hear if anyone else out there has come across this problem, and if you did, what was your solution.

As always, I do appreciate the input from you folks.

Regards,

Rob Stevens

Perth, Western Australia

(Yeah, that place where we’ve lost MH 370!!)