Zodie

I took a break for a while, Did some wood working and vacation and other stuff. So it is good to be back working

I assembled the nose gear

Another view

Decided I have a lot of stuff I want to do on the bottom. So I flipped it over. Starting with the gear. I decided to polish the gear and paint the rest. I saw a kit fox like this and really liked it. Here I am locating the notches.

A closer look. The rubber parts fit in here some how.

Took a look at where the step goes

Saw this trick on Bill Sewell's web site. http://www.n601bz.com/

It worked nice.

Here it is holding the brake line.

Used a cutting wheel and a small drum to cut the notches. You can see the small block of wood I used to prop it up. Lots of small cuts, see how it fits and then a little more. Started out with just the drum. That went too slow and was hard to get straight. The cut off wheel very carefully applied worked well .

Here you see the final notch.

On to the axel and brake assembly. I bought a steel drill guide to make the cuts. It worked ok but, you really have to be careful with a hand drill. I ended up with some tight bolts. Ended up using an extended 1/4 bit and the axel as a guide and had to re-drill and open up a couple of the holes. It really worked better than the drill guide. I was concerned at first but looking at the holes they should be fine.

Here you can see the placement I chose for the axel

The Main Wheels were packed in preventive grease. I disassembled them An easy task. The snap rings and packing came right out. Just like repacking bearings on a trailer or my old cars.

I decided to use synthetic grease to repack the bearings.

Here they are with the bearings repacked and put back together

Next to put the tube in. I made sure the holes were relived. I also ended up putting a rubber patch as an additional washer between the wheel here and the tube.

Some talc powder and a little bit of careful stuffing. I have 3 wheels now

I used a step drill to cut the hole in the bracket and the rubber. When you tighten it down it looks fine.

Here is a view from underneath.

I spent a lot of time polishing the gear. I started with a random orbital with 220. Then wet sand with 600, 1200 and then 2000 wet dry paper. Then I hit it with Blue Magic. Then I cleaned it with Mineral Spirits. It came out fairly nice. It still has some grain in it but looks good.