Addendum - For those of you just joining this thread, there are a lot better pictures on subsequent pages of this thread)
I've been busy fixing up a lot of stuff on the Charger. I thoroughly degreased the inside belly and discovered a couple of cracks in the landing gear weldments. What I found were symmetric (left and right gear legs)cracks. The crack is a single fracture located on the fillet weld which joins the pivot tube to the LOWER gear leg gusset. This weld is ONLY located on the horizontal section of that weld.
Based off the position of the weld and the stresses that the landing gear is subject to, it seems that the welds failed in tension from an aft force exerted upon the landing gear.
Since the only sign of cracking is on the weld itself, this will be a fairly simple repair. Phew!
I am more concerned with the reason this occurred and what I can do to prevent it from occurring again.
Thoughts?
I noticed on the gear leg (and on the plans) that the weld is only on the one side of the gussett)
Glenn
I've been busy fixing up a lot of stuff on the Charger. I thoroughly degreased the inside belly and discovered a couple of cracks in the landing gear weldments. What I found were symmetric (left and right gear legs)cracks. The crack is a single fracture located on the fillet weld which joins the pivot tube to the LOWER gear leg gusset. This weld is ONLY located on the horizontal section of that weld.
Based off the position of the weld and the stresses that the landing gear is subject to, it seems that the welds failed in tension from an aft force exerted upon the landing gear.
Since the only sign of cracking is on the weld itself, this will be a fairly simple repair. Phew!
I am more concerned with the reason this occurred and what I can do to prevent it from occurring again.
Thoughts?
I noticed on the gear leg (and on the plans) that the weld is only on the one side of the gussett)
Glenn
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