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Hangar Flying / Re: Viton O-rings in Clevelands?
« on: February 03, 2009, 06:54:31 PM »
The failure mode was referring to the original Buna-N rings which came in the brakes.
A CFI friend of mine had a brake failure in the right brake of his RV-8A which caused him to leave a taxiway, fortunately with negligible damage. He is very cautious about his brakes, but had recently given a checkout in the airplane. He has since upgraded to Viton/83282.
There have been a significant number of brake failures (almost always the right brake, because of engine torque) and a small handful of brake fires in nosewheel RVs. I also follow the Cirrus lists, and there have been a handful of airframes lost to brake fires on the ground. There was an AD in the Cirri requiring larger brakes, vent holes in the wheel pants, and "telltale" stickers on the brakes which change colors if they overheat.
The tailwheel RVs are less susceptible, because they have steerable tailwheels, and the TW configuration discourages heavy brake use anyway :-) There was one RV-8 incident resulting from forcing the airplane onto the runway at high speed and braking heavily (very tired pilot making a round-the world flight being yelled at by foreign controllers at the end of a multi-hour overwater leg).
When I bought my O-rings, they were available in 75 and 90 durometer. I bought a selection and have installed only the 75s so far.
A CFI friend of mine had a brake failure in the right brake of his RV-8A which caused him to leave a taxiway, fortunately with negligible damage. He is very cautious about his brakes, but had recently given a checkout in the airplane. He has since upgraded to Viton/83282.
There have been a significant number of brake failures (almost always the right brake, because of engine torque) and a small handful of brake fires in nosewheel RVs. I also follow the Cirrus lists, and there have been a handful of airframes lost to brake fires on the ground. There was an AD in the Cirri requiring larger brakes, vent holes in the wheel pants, and "telltale" stickers on the brakes which change colors if they overheat.
The tailwheel RVs are less susceptible, because they have steerable tailwheels, and the TW configuration discourages heavy brake use anyway :-) There was one RV-8 incident resulting from forcing the airplane onto the runway at high speed and braking heavily (very tired pilot making a round-the world flight being yelled at by foreign controllers at the end of a multi-hour overwater leg).
When I bought my O-rings, they were available in 75 and 90 durometer. I bought a selection and have installed only the 75s so far.