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Foam Acrowot Undercart Repair


Nigel Heather
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My acrowot has suffered the not too uncommon fate of having the undercarriage mounting plate ripped out on landing.  I was coming in very slowly, should have been very smooth but I was a tad short and caught the unmown grass on the edge of the strip.

 

I have done a repair, replaced the steel bolts with nylon.  I have flown since and the new plate just came off on a smooth landing.  It is back on with more glue.

 

I’ve also heard that increasing the size of the wheels is a good idea.  Anyone done this, the stock ones are 2.25” (57mm), I’ve heard suggestions of 3” (76mm) - I get that bigger is better but does that look okay or does it ruin the looks.

 

Cheers,

 

Nigel

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What glue are you using?  UHU Por works well on foam as does Gorilla glue and to make the plate more secure you could try inserting 6mm dowel through the plate and into the fuselage to give a bigger glueing area and make it more secure.  If your grass is long or rough then bigger wheels will roll more easily and appearance is secondary to function ?

 

Geoff

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The plate is on at the moment.  What I did was to fill the slots that the plastic plate goes into with glue and thin ply.  I glued some triangular fillet to the ends to give a bigger area to glue to.

 

It came off on the first attempt.  I then glued it back hopefully more strongly but not tried it yet.

 

If it comes off again, I will take up you suggestion of dowels.

 

Would like to try bigger wheels, just wondering whether 76mm will look too silly.

 

Cheers,

 

Nigel

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  • 1 month later...
  • 2 years later...

This is how I have avoided breaking the landing gear mount on my Acrowot Foam E.

 

One of my fellow flyers suggested that the U/C was too rigid for the weight of the model, and a possible solution would be to "lighten" the undercarriage.

I've done this on my Acrowot Foam E and despite my arrival style landings the original landing gear plate and screws are still firmly attached to the model.

The worst I've done is bent the gear badly, but the gear remained screwed to the U/C plate and the U/C plate remained stuck to the acrowot. This arrival got a round of appluase from my fellow flyers - it was pretty dramatic. I just unscrewed the U/C when I got home, straightened it and screwed it back on, ready for the following weekend.

 

Did the same on a Wot 4 foam E. The U/C plate is still attached to it, but I did manage to break the plywood support in the Wot 4 Foam E fuselage just recently.

 

A couple of minutes with a stepped reamer (Lidl's finest) and job done. I think it looks pretty cool too, but maybe that's just me.

 

ACROWOT_UC.jpg

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