Left Leg Attached - Again!

Putting it all back together was much harder than I thought. Or I might have just forgotten how awkward it was the first time around. Working on this alone is not optimal although I wouldn't know how much easier it would be to have a second pair of hands around. Before a leg could get remounted to the fuselage I had to install the beefed up wear plates to the bottom of the U-section. Torquing those screws was a bit tricky but with a whole set of adapters and gender changers the job could finally get done.



Notice that I had a pair of AN5 bolts inserted to help aligning the plates correctly. Here you get a view from the bottom:



Now attaching the left leg was a real hassle. With a lot of wiggling the brackets and leg finally got aligned to get the bolts in the corresponding holes I could at least put the nuts on all the bolts. Didn't torque anything yet nor get the nuts tight.


It got too late to finish the job, but at least I know that the work sessions can be short enough to fit into the evenings this week.
I almost forgot, I have one concern about the hardware provided by Van's. The plans show that there's a washer underneath the nuts and the bolt heads for the outboard bracket. They ask for AN960-516 and one for AN960-516L. Well, the plans do that with the fancy NAS1149 number that I cannot recall right now. However, the -516L washers are not provided (and not listed in the inventory) nor are there any leftovers from the rest of the kit hardware. The plans also don't show where the -516L goes or where the thick one should go. Even worse, it looks like the AN5 bolts might not be long enough to get sufficiently through the stop nuts using two -516 washers. We will see if this is a real problem when I tighten the bolts.