Landing Gear is Off

My shop day started chilly temps down in the lower 40s and I decided to utilize the propane heater for my second day working on the Landing Gear SB. Thanks to calm to no wind conditions, the heater worked pretty well in the open car port. In just 45 minutes the first leg was off.

The only part of the landing gear that remains inside the tunnel, is the inboard mounting block that also connects to the brake line. I put a paper towel under the brake line fitting, to catch any drops of brake fluid coming out of it.

The right leg was up for removal next.

This one gave me some grief as the outboard mounting block could not get removed without drilling out the infamous rivet again that keeps that block from easily sliding in and out the tunnel. Eventually, after 45 minutes again, the leg was removed and stored.

The part in the instructions about what parts of the removed landing gear hardware we are supposed to retain was text only and, me being a visual person, I needed a while to look up the drawings in the landing gear section to identify what they were. As a short-cut here is a picture of the hardware for one side.

It consists of the two nuts of the outboard bolts (the washers were not mentioned, but I wonder why, so I threw them in anyway), the outboard mounting bracket and the inboard wear plate.

A closer look at the washers showed some odd deformation on two of them. You can see it best on the washer in the center of the following picture.

This indicates some very small stress points and I cannot figure where this was coming from. This landing gear wasn't even in use yet, so I can really see how this could cause some stress related fatigue and failure on the U-section where this washer was located.

Next step was to mark the side skins to highlight the region where rivets had to be removed.

I drilled out all the rivets inside the marked area on the left side. And pushed out any stubborn stems that didn't want to just fall out. The 4 rivets in the U-Section that attach the stiffener for the side skin were most awkward to get to. The recommended 12x#30 drill bit is way too long to get to them and the jobber bit is too short. I ended up using my rivet remover kit that is about 6" long. This will be even trickier on the right side as the ELT bracket will prevent me from using even that 6" long bit. I anticipate hacing to use the angle drill there but I haven't tried yet.

Then the doublers were deburred and clecoed onto the side skins. Some 50 something holes of drilling later, the side skin was perforated as requested and it looked like a cleco hedgehog.

Before I removed these doublers, I match-drilled the new 1202U side skin stiffener which will go on the upper side of the U-Section (in addition to 1202T, the one on the lower side). This stiffener combo is a bit weird as the SB kit comes with a replacement 1202T that looks pretty much like the 1202T that I just removed from the plane. I cannot see that the material of the new 1202T was any thicker or different from the old one.

I assume we will be asked to discard the old one and I will surely install the new 1202T, I just would like to understand what the difference is.

Next, all the doublers and clecos came off again and the holes and parts were deburred. They are ready for riveting now and I think I'll prime them before that. These doublers will be in an area where they could easily collect moisture and grow corrosion without noticing.
This was the time when daylight was getting scarce and I called it a day. I'm now 9 hours into the SB and close to halfway done with it.

During the week I plan to throw some hours in for prep work. I need to prep the doublers for priming and prime them, and I think U should be able to do some of the drilling out of rivets during one evening as well.