The tubing for the engine mount arrives soon so I wanted to get the undercarriage mount exactly correct first. As originally built, with the wheels level, the fuselage was about 0.9 degrees low to the left. Although this doesn't sound very much it represents about 0.6" over the width of the fuselage. I decided to correct this and get it as accurate as possible. Part of the difference was removed by re-drilling the undercarriage socket mount holes but this only yielded an improvement of about 0.3 degrees so the tie rod between the top of the two undercarriage leg sockets was cut at the weld with the left socket allowing the left leg to pivot down slightly. A piece of 1/4" plate was then cut into a disc and tack welded between the socket and the cross tube to fill the slight gap created. This corrected the remaining error so the undercarriage mount was then removed and the joint final welded. The extra mount holes were also filled with weld metal. The mount was then replaced and everything re-measured. As always with welding there was some slight movement and an error of between 0.1 and 0.2 degrees had returned but that will have to be near enough. The toe-in was re-measured at exactly 1.5 degrees for both wheels. The line of the extended axle between the wheels is exactly parallel to the firewall, and the sideways displacement of each wheel from the fuselage is the same within the limits of measurement accuracy so I assume the aircraft will track straight which is pretty important for a tail dragger.
