South Burlington, VT
- Aircraft Year
- 1978 580
- Aircraft Type
- Super Commander
- Reg Number
- N555LP
- Serial Number
- 14405
Hi All,
As you know, the achille's heel of our otherwise well-designed airplanes is the nose gear. Our gear has very little caster and is easily subject to severe shaking episodes on take-off and roll-out. Just one severe episode may fracture your magnesium/aluminum torque tube.
Some of you have already faced very expensive repairs by putting up with a shimmy too long. Neither the torque tubes, nor any other major nose gear components, are available (except as very expensive unapproved parts) at this time.
There are a few things you can do to extend the service life of your nose gear:
Firstly: Have your nose gear inspected and refurbished by a Commander expert.
Secondly: Regularly check/service your shimmy dampner.
And Most Importantly: Don't continue to operate a plane that is shimmying or shaking.
Most of us who own Rockwells are nursing very old and tired dampners. From the expereince of servicing many dampners, I know that many of these units have deteriorated to a dampning drag of 5 pounds or less (after fresh servicing!) compared to 20 pounds spec for the original new units. Loss of this dampening drag causes your gear to be subject to substantial acceleration of wear (even if you are not yet noticing any shimmy) and decreased life expectancy.
I have obtained the design drawings and will undertake a design capture and production run of new dampners if enough of you are interested to justify the project at this time. Pricing would depend very much on how big a production run we make.
How many of you might be interested in a new damper?
Thanks,
Jim
As you know, the achille's heel of our otherwise well-designed airplanes is the nose gear. Our gear has very little caster and is easily subject to severe shaking episodes on take-off and roll-out. Just one severe episode may fracture your magnesium/aluminum torque tube.
Some of you have already faced very expensive repairs by putting up with a shimmy too long. Neither the torque tubes, nor any other major nose gear components, are available (except as very expensive unapproved parts) at this time.
There are a few things you can do to extend the service life of your nose gear:
Firstly: Have your nose gear inspected and refurbished by a Commander expert.
Secondly: Regularly check/service your shimmy dampner.
And Most Importantly: Don't continue to operate a plane that is shimmying or shaking.
Most of us who own Rockwells are nursing very old and tired dampners. From the expereince of servicing many dampners, I know that many of these units have deteriorated to a dampning drag of 5 pounds or less (after fresh servicing!) compared to 20 pounds spec for the original new units. Loss of this dampening drag causes your gear to be subject to substantial acceleration of wear (even if you are not yet noticing any shimmy) and decreased life expectancy.
I have obtained the design drawings and will undertake a design capture and production run of new dampners if enough of you are interested to justify the project at this time. Pricing would depend very much on how big a production run we make.
How many of you might be interested in a new damper?
Thanks,
Jim
