Most landing gear problems that show up in the field trace back to a handful of installation mistakes, most of which are genuinely easy to avoid once you know to look for them.
Skipping the dry-fit step. It’s tempting to go straight to bolting gear down, especially on a part that looks like an obvious, simple fit — but a proper dry-fit (see Day 5) is where most fitting problems, from hole misalignment to unexpected fuselage interference, actually get caught, before they’re locked in place with tightened fasteners.
Over-tightening fasteners “to be safe.” Covered in detail in Day 17, but worth repeating here because it’s genuinely one of the most common mistakes — tighter is not automatically safer with carbon fibre mounting points, and over-torquing is a real, common cause of cracked mounting plates at the point of installation rather than developing later from flight loads.
Ignoring axle alignment. A gear that’s correctly mounted but with wheels that toe in or out even slightly will cause take-off tracking problems that get wrongly diagnosed as a rudder or crosswind issue — the alignment check in Day 5 takes thirty seconds and prevents a genuinely common source of ground-handling frustration.
Fitting wheel pants before finalising gear and wheel position. Covered in Day 6, but worth flagging again as an installation-order mistake specifically — pants fitted first, then adjusted around, cause more rework than pants fitted last, around a confirmed gear and wheel position.
Not test-flexing before the first flight. The simple hand-push test from Day 5 catches a surprising number of installation problems — a loose mount, an unexpected creak, a leg that flexes unevenly — while you’re still safely on the bench rather than discovering it on a landing.
Most of these mistakes share a common thread: they’re all avoided simply by not rushing the installation, and by checking each step properly before moving to the next one rather than assuming a “should be fine” fit is a “confirmed fine” fit.
Our Carbon Undercarriage suitable for Acrowot XL is a good reference point if you’re shopping around.