This is always an exciting milestone in every aircraft construction effort - putting the plane on it's landing gear. It is also extremely important to be very precise as this is the platform on which I will leave and return to the Earth for each flight. When rolling down the runway at 65-75 MPH, the gear needs to track straight and true, so I made sure to measure 3x on these tasks!
In order to achieve the exact toe-in for the gear legs, and to make sure they are level on the fuselage, a simple angle iron jig was required. I built this from 2x 4' section of angle steel from the local True Value. I attached these to a rigid 1x4 I had laying around and leveled the assembly under the fuselage. The gear legs then slid into the fuselage cage receptacles and the axles were adjusted to sit flush on the jig. (*more on fitting the gear legs into the fuselage receptacles later.)
The legs are then toed in using a .032" shim. From there, the top of the gear legs are drilled through the top of the receptacles. You'll notice in the photos, left leg sits approx. 1/16" proud of the top of the receptacle opening while the right leg sits approx. 1/16" shy. This is simply due to the imperfections in the manufacturing from leg to leg or within the cage construction.
Drilling the gear leg mounting bolt through the receptacle tubes was an exercise in patience. Some cobalt drill bits and plenty of cutting oil with a slow-turning electric drill, and eventually, I got there. Keeping an eye on the angle of the drill so as to stay within the center of the tube was challenging, but I took my time. Though I did not stay perfectly parallel to the cage tubes, I stayed perfectly centered on the tube front to rear and top to bottom.
[*The biggest challenge in this portion of the construction effort was in getting the gear legs to slide into the receptacles. As delivered from the factory, there was NO WAY these legs were making it into the slots. So, following advice from some other builders, I bought a brake disc cylinder hone and began scraping material from the interior of the upper and lower fuselage receptacles. Though a seemingly immaterial amount of 'shaving' was performed, this was enough to get the gear legs in with the assistance of some anti-seize compound.]
