Tail wheel well and the mystery hole repairs!

Again, as you might recall from the first posts of this blog, I found many areas that needed some repairs due to wear and tear over the years.

The worst by far was the groove worn into the inside of the tail wheel well from the air fill stem. It was just a matter of time before a good hard landing would break the tail wheel right out of the tail. 

This radius groove was cut by the air fill stem that was improperly mounted in the hub.


I taped the axle sleeve opening and then used a mix of fine glass cloth and cotton flocking to fill in the groove. I followed the application with a couple off layers of fine glass cloth to seal it. The final cover was peel ply nylon and the excess resin was squeegeed out.

The results... No groove!.


I removed the peel ply and then sanded off the excess resin to return the wheel well and exterior fairing to it's original shape.



The axle sleeve hole needed to be cleaned out. I test fitted the brass sleeves and axle to verify that the alignment was good.








I replaced the wheel back into the wheel well to verify the fit and if the wheel will rotate freely.





And it did!

The properly mounted inner tube and the air stem does not rub against the wheel well.










The mystery hole was first thought to have been cause by a rock striking the belly during a take-off roll, but in fact had to be caused by some repair station drilling a hole in a rib to zip tie a replacement Coax antenna cable into the fuselage.












I filled the hole with a wad of chopped glass roving and a mix of resin and cotton flock. I cover the patch with a single ply of fine glass cloth and then nylon peel ply. I used a piece of foam with plastic sheet to press the patch to the correct contour and let the resin cure.








The repair is completed and ready to sand smooth.





The odds-and-end tasks are never done!