Right wheel is on
Another evening, another wheel. This time I tried a little bit different method of drilling the cotter pin hole. First off, I immediately removed the gear leg and put it up on the work bench. Then, instead of marking the hole and grinding the threads first, I simply ran a long #30 drill bit in the hole in the nut as a drill guide. I did that just a bit for a mark. Then took the wheel off and made sure I would still be able to get the nut off. Yep, all good. I put the nut back on, without the wheel and proceeded to use the hole in the nut as a drill guide until I had a real hole started (through the thread). Then I removed the nut to keep from messing up the aluminum too much and continued to drill the hole in the axle. No marking, punching or other grinding shenanigans. This was much better. First side hole drilled slow with a lot of boelube, put the nut back on, indexed the hole (with a drill bit), and did the same on the other side of the axle. Much better results with less hassle.
So now it is all sitting on two main tires! Woohoo! Kinda cool actually. Next we move on to the nose gear. Tanya came out to the garage this evening and her only comment was, “Wow, the airplane got a lot taller.” Yep, I’m glad I waited until the very end to put the wheels on it.