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Permalink Reply by John Austin on Wednesday

Probably a good question for Roger, but on my 750 STOL with the rounded fork, the bolts are AN4's and I aligned the aft edge of the curved steel plate (that bolts to the fork) with the rear edge of the fork where the radiused edge tapers out onto the top of the fork.  BTW, my original plans called for a drainage hole to be drilled in the steel mounting plate and fork.

John

N750A

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Permalink Reply by William Carter on Thursday

I finally found the rounded nose fork in the Photo Assembly Guide for the 701.  It says to "Center the Nose Gear Strut Assembly on the Wheel Fork Doubler and Wheel Fork."  So I'll center left to right and front to back.  Centering front to back puts it right at the radiused part you used.  So that checks.

The Photo Assembly Guide says to drill the holes up to "correct size".  I found one Build Log on EAA that mentioned upsizing the holes to 1/4". My Nose Gear Strut already has 1/4" holes so AN4s also check.  I measured the steel plate and the aluminum fork and they total about 9/16" and that is the grip length for a AN4-10 so that's what I'm going to use.

The Photo Assembly Guide mentions a doubler but I didn't receive one in my kit.  It also doesn't show one in the pictures so I'm guessing that's an old reference.

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Permalink Reply by Perry Delano on Thursday

Hi William,

If you plan to add one of those tow bar brackets, as we have done on RAA's Big Tire Cruzer and on My 701 you will need an extra 3/16 or so of grip length. We seemed to have AN5 bolts of the proper length so we upsized the front bolts on both forks of the planes to provide the proper grip length c/w a couple of exposed threads. We got the tow bar brackets from Skytech here in British Columbia, but I think they are an original Zenith design, and you can probably get them through Zenith.

Perry

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Permalink Reply by William Carter on Friday

I hadn't even thought about a tow bar.  I'll look into it.

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