These posts are great. What I'm enjoying most is names I see from the KRnet of long ago.
I started building 6 months before my oldest son was born. He'll be turning 26 in March and my yet to be finished KR2S has been through a divorce and 3 house moves yet its still in my basement. - Next to a Challenger II that I love and was flying until my engine seized in late 2020 and i landed in an overgrown field. Lucky to find a field here in NH as we are heavily wooded but i am finishing up those repairs. Frankly I don't think I would have survived if in a KR as the stall speed on my CHII is about 28mph. I walked away without a scratch. Been to Lake Barkley back in the day followed by a visit to ML's house when he was building. That was after John Schaeffer flew in with a borrowed prop of the wrong pitch with the correct prop still in the box on the seat next to him as it had just been delivered prior to him taking off. Great group of guys here. Would love to see how long others have been on the KRnet. Rich ________________________________ From: KRnet <krnet-boun...@list.krnet.org> on behalf of Oscar Zuniga via KRnet <krnet@list.krnet.org> Sent: Tuesday, November 22, 2022 6:12:38 PM To: krnet@list.krnet.org <krnet@list.krnet.org> Cc: Oscar Zuniga <taildr...@hotmail.com> Subject: KRnet> Brake Fluid- just curious Larry asked- >What do you consider a brake "overhaul" for your system?? Larry, I didn't build my plane and I had never had my wheels and brakes both completely apart before. In my case I had a nagging problem with a little drip on the hangar floor from one of the brakes. Of course my first thought was that it was just that the bleed nipple was loose, but that wasn't it. Closer examination showed an ugly streak of black goop around that brake from runway dust sticking to the leaking fluid, so at annual I decided to bite the bullet and tear into the brake. Bad O-ring was letting fluid get past and out onto the rest of the assembly where it was cooking itself into a stubborn crud, so the linings on that side were also dark with goop and dust and I decided to pull off both wheels and brakes and clean all parts down to ground zero. Good thing I did (as Jeff Scott knows, since he helped me locate the proper axle nuts for my wheels and in getting things right). The problem with these Clevelands from older planes is that there are umpteen different combinations of grease seal felts, stainless steel rings, and various other things that vary from plane model to plane model. Some planes have wheel pants, some have bare wheel retracts, who knows what else. Check out the Cleveland wheel and brake parts pages in the Aircraft Spruce catalog and you'll see what I mean... there are many variations and parts assembly sequences. To top it off, the ID tags on my wheels and brakes are nearly obliterated, so I had to piece the nomenclature together from what I could see on the tags. Mine are apparently off a 1970s Bonanza... TWICE the gross weight of my 1,080 lb max gross Air Camper! However, I've never gotten the sensation of having my plane want to come up on its nose when stopping hard, and being a slow plane on a big airport with a tower and a lot of commercial air traffic, on short final (the only kind of final I make in my low and slow flyer) I've gotten used to hearing "Experimental Four-One Charlie Charlie, no delay on the runway. Following traffic is a 737 on a five-mile final". I frequently brake hard to make the first turnoff on our 8800 ft long runway. Anyway, since the linings on one side were cruddy and fluid-soaked, I elected to replace the linings on both sides. Those turned out to be some of Rapco's cheapest linings, no big deal, and the rivets came with the linings and were easy to do with the right tools. The felt grease seals were black with dust and years of crud, so I got new ones of those. The inner stainless rings that sandwich those seals into the wheels were missing, so those are now new. The O-rings in the brake cylinders are new and I cleaned and lightly honed the cylinder walls before reassembly. Having everything off the airplane anyway, I took the wheels apart, cleaned and repainted those, and removed, cleaned, and polished the steel studs that the outer calipers slide on (they were pitted and slightly rusted). All that stuff got cleaned and repainted and all worked better and more smoothly. That's when I determined that the original builder had used the wrong axle nuts (castellated), which wouldn't thread onto the axles far enough to get the big cotter pin installed without overtightening the grease seals and bearings to where the wheels were binding. Jeff pointed out to me that there is another style of axle nut (Spruce part no. 06-00937) that slips inside the grease seals and rings and bears directly onto the bearing race without compressing the grease rings. Those did the trick and I was back in business. Long story long, to do all of that, and because the plane was in annual and taken apart, I drained the old brake fluid and refilled with fresh. I broke in the new linings per Rapco's brief procedure and was flying again after sign-off by my A&P who inspected my work. I love my brakes but yes... we don't fly these airplanes enough, or use the brakes enough, to require "overhaul" very often at all ;o) -Oscar
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