Somewhere on here I saw a neat saddle that someone had made to fit between gear legs under the gearbox. I think it even had holes in it to access gear leg bolts.
David,
The balance was not perfect however it was close enough to not be a concern. You can sorta see the bar that I used for the tail it is also made from 2" square tube bolted to the vertical stab mount bracket and a pivot welded in the center of its span. The third photo show that I used the same rotisserie base while painting the wings.
John E. Barrett
aka. Johneb
Sent from my "Cray Super Computer"
bagarre wrote:With the engine and wings off, is it light enough for two people to dead lift?
David, I am going to defer to someone with better recollection perhaps Del (I do not recall picking up the fuselage being an issue).
I think 3 men and a boy could handle it.
Have you considered making some attachments out of 5/8" plate to bolt in place of the gear legs. Let them protrude out several inches and bolt some large casters to them. Then you could roll it around whenever you want by yourself. You could get fancy and weld some square tube on each end (vertical), and have smaller square tubes with multiple holes drilled in them to adjust height off floor like an adjustable tail stand
The WX in the PNW was too crappy to fly this weekend so I welded up a fuselage jack stand so that I can install the Lady Legs that I purchased a while back. About all there is left to do is attach some thick carpet to the contoured 4x4.
Joe, That is awesome! Do you intend to be able to use just one jack? I can imagine if the inner square tube extends down into the outer tubes far enough, it would work.
One suggested improvement.............Weld some tie down rings very near the bottom. Then after you get the plane jacked up, you can ratchet strap each aircraft tie down eyebolt on the lift strut to the rings (or eyebolts) on the fixture. That stabilize the plane in the event you have kids around that think the lift struts are monkey bars.
wingnut wrote:Joe, That is awesome! Do you intend to be able to use just one jack? I can imagine if the inner square tube extends down into the outer tubes far enough, it would work.
One suggested improvement.............Weld some tie down rings very near the bottom. Then after you get the plane jacked up, you can ratchet strap each aircraft tie down eyebolt on the lift strut to the rings (or eyebolts) on the fixture. That stabilize the plane in the event you have kids around that think the lift struts are monkey bars.
Thanks Del, and I like your idea of welding tie down rings at the bottom. The inner tubes go all the way to the floor when they are all the way down in the outer tubes. When they are all the way down, it will just barely fit under the bulkhead area behind the gear so I will have 19" of "up" travel and still have enough inner tube in the outer tube to be stable. I originally though I would lift it up with a cherry picker hoist via spreader bar and straps around the engine mount at the firewall, and just use the jack stand to set it on, but I could probably use a bottle jack in the center (or two) and jack and pin, put blocks under the jack, jack and pin again and so on.