Luscombe Gear Tour
The main gear system of the Luscombe is far more complex than the simple spring gear of the Cessna 120/140
When fully assembled most of it's intricacies are hidden and, unfortunately neglected
Once I had it all apart, cleaned up and had all of the new parts I needed I thought it might be fun to just put it all together
just like in the picture. Something you don't normally see.
WARNING: this stuff is only suited for hard core Luscombe nuts
I think it was Dan McNeill who asked why you would want to replace these beautiful streamlined (and polished) tie rods with ski struts
If you study this system you'll see that these tie rods do only one thing - they prevent the gear leg from bending during a hard landing
when the oleo has bottomed out but I suspect they are engineered to do that only to a specific point after which they give way and the
wingtip spar takes over the damage control. The tie rods obviously provide no compression stiffness
to prevent the gear leg from folding inwards. Ski struts supposedly do but you need to think of where that force ends up going to.
The infamous $185 Cleveland mechanical brake arm return spring
Of which I am, unfortunately one short of :-(
The tie rod clevis forks are about forty bucks a piece and there was a bit of surface corrosion so I wire brushed and painted them
Not as good as having new cad plated ones but it's something that's easy to keep an eye on and replace if necessary.
The tie rods have left hand threads at one end and right hand threads at the other. The clevis forks and nuts are LH and RH P/N's
So just like any tie rod you turn it one way or the other to increase or decrease tension, then just line up aerodynamically and polish!
Remember when my oleo looked like a turd? Much better now eh?
Here's an older picture of how the new shackle fits on the right side gear leg
New non skid on the step. People have asked me about the silver paint. It's called Bumper Chrome and it's a Tempo paint
available from Aircraft Spruce and Specialty. I used it just so the zinc chromate wouldn't stand out against the polished aluminum
where those parts of the gear show outside of the fairings
The right side has this dogleg in the jury to the jack strut. It's because of the shackle at the upper pivot point on the main
gear leg. The main pivot points have to be able to spread as the oleo compresses and a dummy like me would have put one of those
swinging shackles on both sides but the frugal geniuses at Luscombe were ever consious of weight and cost so they figured out
that you only needed one. As for the dogleg? I guess it accomodates that movement between the main and jack struts.
It has to do with structural engineering I guess. I don't really get it but apparently it works.
Here are the new shackle (and wing strut attach) parts. You might recall that I had to remove the old shackle with a hacksaw
Definite proof of what the effects of 50 years of neglect can have on this system.
A Cessna spring gear on the other hand could sluff that neglect off but it's not nearly as elegant (from a gearheads perspective)
Old parts. Note the bent S9 jackstrut fork
Refurbished parts
I put the wheel on and walked this around like one of those nerdy property assessors with their measuring gizmo
It all works (even the brake)
So hey, progress is still being made. The gear gets reattached to the fuselage and Romeo gets moved out of the critically
deteriorating VAR Hangar 1 into the spacious and accomodating new VAR Hangar 3
More important than that, N72004 will finally be back at an airport!!!