Wing leveling

[PA1195]

Re: Wing leveling

Gary, in my experience if your dihedral is off the problem is a bad repair in the fuselage rather than the struts.

Yes that's a possibility. Without a welding jig in which to do a repeatable repair, or blue prints to confirm dimensions, it's up to the repair folks to do the best they can. The dimensions I've seen apply primarily to longitudinal and not latitudinal tubing.

Now for the rest of the story that may confirm your experience...On 12/18/70 in Illinois repairs to the lower fuselage in the vicinity of the landing gear were accomplished and the airframe recovered. Log entries and a 337 indicate the right gear fittings, gear truss members, and lower fuselage tubing were either replaced or repaired with the inner sleeve method. It's very likely that the width of the fuselage slightly increased leading to a change in dihedral and potential range of washout.

I'm not concerned about the +0.5* dihedral, didn't retain the original struts for comparison, nor have I measured the new units. She flies fine and for being five years older than me (74) still gets the job done like a happy Taylorcraft despite the wounds and scars.

Gary

[3Dreaming]

Re: Wing leveling

I did a restoration on a clip wing that had a previous repair to the lower fuselage around the landing gear. I suggested trying to find a good fuselage. When we put it together one wingtip was about 3" low. We added 3/4" to one of the struts to get things lined back up. It is a good thing that it is experimental now.

[PA1195]

Re: Wing leveling

I did a restoration on a clip wing that had a previous repair to the lower fuselage around the landing gear. I suggested trying to find a good fuselage. When we put it together one wingtip was about 3" low. We added 3/4" to one of the struts to get things lined back up. It is a good thing that it is experimental now.

Both wings are the same dihedral when leveled via a line wing tip to tip at the front spar, so whatever happened during the fuselage repair was uniform side to side. Both factory gear fittings were replaced on the right side at the repair noted and the 337 says same length tubing used in the truss. The sleeves in the lower fuselage cross tubing/truss could result some adjustment to length via cutting and rewelding I assume.

I can measure side to side on the longerons at the rear gear fittings, or lower gear attach hole to hole C/L across the fuselage at that station and post the distance for a comparison. I also have a friend here that has a T and would likely let me measure his fitting to fitting dimensions.

My plan is now to run the rear strut end plugs the final thread out to get max available washout (I'm guessing ~0.75*), then measure the spar dihedral front and back for info, and call it done as it flies good rigged as it is.

Gary