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Tail Wheel Tilt

Mikeyb

Well Known Member
There is enough wear on my tail wheel now to see it is not square to the plane. I can see the tilt in the pivot tube with a square. Is this a problem?
How would you correct it?
Mike
 

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I can’t see the tilt you’re talking about, but maybe that’s because the pic is not zoomed out enough. Is the out of square on the vertical part (not straight up and down), or on the steering arms (not square with the vertical tube. If it’s the vertical tube that is tilted, there’s only one way to fix that - install a new stinger, and re-drill it square, which is not easy because drilling the forward hole for the fuselage bolt is difficult to get done with the tail spring weldment that’s already there. That bolt needs to be a very tight fit. If it doesn’t pull too much to the left or right while taxiing slowly with only idle power, I wouldn’t worry about it, unless the visual tilt is much more obvious than what I see in your picture.
 
In retrospect it wasn’t the best picture but if you look at the tire wear it wearing more on the right side.
 
I put a lot of time into aligning and drilling mine. And it is off by more than yours looks to be off.

I've never noticed it impacting ground handling.
 
To be honest; Most are off by at least that much. As has been said before, when wear becomes a cosmetic issue, turn it around.
 
I think mine is a little off too after looking at it. Seems to function fine though. If tire wear becomes an issue, as others have said, I’ll turn it around. I have to rotate my main gear tires once in a while too.
 
Thanks everyone. Glad I’m not going to deal with match drilling something like that!
 
Mine was leaning a bit, bolts and holes were wearing in the yoke2spring and spring to weldment. The taper pin threads on VAF fixed my problem.

https://vansairforce.net/community/showthread.php?t=138966

I made a cheap and easy jig to hold things in place while I hand reamed for the 3 taper pins.
I took a scrap piece of 3/4” 4’x4’ plywood and squared up some scrap 2x6’s the width of the tailwheel yoke and screwed them to the middle of the plywood. Plopped the plywood on the mostly level floor, removed the tailwheel and slid the yoke over the 2x6’s drilled an hole and installed the axle bolt . Also chocked the main gear. This squared the yoke and also kept things from wiggling, I removed 1 bolt at a time and reamed the holes.
 
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Mine is the same. I just flipped the wheel Saturday.

One thing I did notice is that I had basically zero pre-load on the tailwheel bearing, so it spun very freely. On landing, the thing would always spin around like a bad shopping cart wheel until I got the tail solidly planted.

This time I put some drag on the bearing, similar to what I put on the mains, and now it tracks straight on landing, much better!
 
Mine is the same. I just flipped the wheel Saturday.

One thing I did notice is that I had basically zero pre-load on the tailwheel bearing, so it spun very freely. On landing, the thing would always spin around like a bad shopping cart wheel until I got the tail solidly planted.

This time I put some drag on the bearing, similar to what I put on the mains, and now it tracks straight on landing, much better!

Drag on the bearing…did you just tighten the bolt through the bearing tighter? My Tailwheel shopping carts on landing too…if this is a solution it would be quick and easy!
 
Drag on the bearing…did you just tighten the bolt through the bearing tighter? My Tailwheel shopping carts on landing too…if this is a solution it would be quick and easy!

Yup, just went one more flat on the nut and pinned it. Wheel will now spin by hand about 3/4-1 turn and stop. Before it would spin like 4 turns, and you could feel the bearing was loose. Made a difference on rollout for me.
 
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