Tail wheel cold weld

[snoop9erdog]

Dave, your correct....70ksi failure.

It also appears to be the tailspring from van's as a few have mentioned. This weldment may have been the unlucky lemon out of thousands of tailsprings? Let's hope that that is the case.

[WingsOnWheels]

Wow, that is a very poor weld job. As an old pipline welder that was teaching me stick welding as a kid would say, "That one won't pass X-ray".

[longranger]

Originally Posted by brad walton

It does look like a Bell tail wheel fork. But the swivel is probably Van's. Bell builds the forks but suggests you install it on the Van's swivel, which it fits perfectly so there is no need to redrill the assembly to the tail spring.

Maybe the title of the thread can be changed - the tailwheel fork didn't fail, Vans spring to swivel weld did. I'd hate to see Bell tailwheel forks get a bad rap on a misunderstanding.

[cka357]

I can't help but to study the photos in hopes of providing some useful information to the group. Please forward these photos to the mother ship. I'm sure they would want to do some failure analysis on these components or at least be aware of the joint failure to determine preventive measures of inspecton and avoiding future occurrences.

Chuck

[gmpaul]

To answer a few questions
The brand of tail wheel is what comes with the kit. I did install a Bell tail wheel but that is just an insert that fits in the original WD-101.
The penetration of the weld looks very shallow and that was from 5:00 to 8:00 and 12:00 to 1:00 the rest was not holding (to my untrained eye). So moving backwards would put the most stress on the 12:00 to 1:00 weld.
On the bright side I wasn't landing! No better place than in your own hanger for it to break. I called Vans and talked to Joe in support. He said I was describing a quality control problem and send him these pictures.
Yes I think I did get the one lemon out of a thousand tail spring kits.

Thanks every one for the support
G P

[David Paule]

Let's also note the presence of corrosion, which could have been a contributing factor.

Dave

[Gisnar]

This looks like a bad weld, poor penetration, also maybe not normalized after or allowed to cool to fast. Another possibility is the wrong filler rod was used. You may want to ask the manufacturer if the welder was aircraft certified for steel.
Then again you may want to buy a replacement from someone else.
Or, even more fun, take a semester or two and learn to TIG weld at your local community college and take you aircraft certification exam. I think that is one reason why most of us have experimentals is to learn new skills.

[Russ McCutcheon]

Not looking too good, broke right through the center of the weld as in weld failed, don?t see too much of this, never seen it on any RV part regardless the welder.

To be clear we don?t build the parts pictured in this thread.

[rocketbob]

Poor weld and they likely used the wrong filler rod. Easy to fix.

[AZtailwind]

Originally Posted by rocketbob

Poor weld and they likely used the wrong filler rod. Easy to fix.

Agreed.
All the rust doesn't help. Maybe some triangle finger stringers would provide 150% loads to hold up on excess stress.