[redhawk]

I'm having a terrible problem with gear leg shimmy on my RV-4. Just looking for advice from anyone who has modified their gear legs with wood stiffiners?
Thanks.

 

[strahler13]

Air Pressure?

Try varing the air pressure first. I can get a bad shimmy at about 20 mph if I have slightly high pressure in the tires.

Mark

 

[woodmanrog]

The whole purpose of the wood stiffeners is to eliminate the shimmy. Check out my website for more info.
www.turtlewooddesigns.com

 

[jrs14855]

shimmy

The best Goodyear tires
Balance the wheel/tire assembly
Try lower tire pressure.
Stiffners
Check fit of gear leg in lower end of socket, If its too loose it may shimmy regardless of what else you do. If all the above fails, there is a fix for the loose socket, but it invloves a lot of work

 

[Kyle Boatright]

The best Goodyear tires
Balance the wheel/tire assembly
Try lower tire pressure.

These are the things that greatly improved the shimmy on my RV-6. Out of round, out of balance tires seemed to be the biggest causal factor of shimmy.

 

[jrs14855]

shimmy

The cheap tires are typically way out of balance. I you don't have a balancer for small wheels spinning the tire with a drill motor and rubber pad and using trial and error has been known to work. Some of the better GA shops have tire balancing equipment for small wheels. machine screw with washers in the hub cap holes, and/or stick on auto balance weights on the outboard wheel half.

 

[redhawk]

Thanks everybody for the suggestions! I got my tires balanced and made up some wood gear leg stiffners. We'll see how it all works!

 

[redhawk]

Gear Leg Shimmy

For anyone having a similar problem, the gear leg stiffiners I built and mounted according to the -4 builders manual worked great, and I also lowered my tire pressure to 30psi and had my wheels/tires balanced.
All of that together eliminated my shimmy !