Gear Wiggle

[planeolbob]

what is "T88"? What have others used a glue?
Bob Mika

[Bryan Cotton]

T88 is wood airplane epoxy.

[planeolbob]

Would two part clear epoxy work?
I think the slow curing type would be best to work with.
Bob

[ScottM-Sonex1629]

Bob I would think any 2-part high strength epoxy would work for this job.

I personally had in my supply cabinet, 2-part shafting epoxy for building golf clubs - from Golfsmith. It's rated for attaching metal to metal and standing up to a lot of abuse and holding a driver to a shaft etc...

Mine was a 16 hour until fully cured version and the only drawback to the slow cure is it slowly runs out of the joint while curing!

I used this on my main gear to axle legs and is holding up well.

[Corby202]

Would two part clear epoxy work?

As long as your not talking about laminating resin, that type of resin is to thin. A good quality epoxy resin such as, Araldite, T88 ( sold by Aircraft Spruce, great for wood joints), any two part stuff is fine. Hobby shops now have some good 1 hr cure epoxy I use on my models.
I think the epoxy should be viewed as a back up to the bolts, any movement between the gear leg and the bolt/mount has to be eliminated first.

[planeolbob]

Hi Everyone,
I flew today and did some landings with my Right gear leg glued and a larger bolt installed. It seems to have fixed the problem. Here are a few more pics:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/planeolbo ... 3299029551

The first thing I did was to drive down the B & B Aircraft supply with my calipers and sort through 200 bolts (I even got a blister, poor me).
The bolt I had in the gear had a .2470" dia. the one I replaced it with was .2482". That helped a lot but then I took some of your suggestions and glued the gear leg to the two sleeves in the engine/gear mount.

I used a JB weld product (shown above) that is rated at 3650 PSI. It has a 4 hour set time and cures in 15 hours. I let it cure for 48. I also glued the bottom gear assembly.

Today I did a few landings and high speed runs along the runway. No wiggle at all. We will see how all this holds up.

Bob Mika

[bnvoss]

Hi Bob,
Did you glue only the bolt area or did you glue the full length of the shank (maybe six inches)? My wiggle seems to be more looseness between the titanium gear and the socket gap.
Bob, Sonex 550 tri-gear, Burnet, TX

[Bryan Cotton]

Just glueing the bolt area won't do much. You have to glue the length. The bolt still provides the strength but the glue provides the fit.

[planeolbob]

As I said in my post "glued the gear leg to the two sleeves in the engine/gear mount."