woodmanrog
Well Known Member
Upon landing at X01 on Saturday, I experienced shimmy so bad I thought I had a flat tire. Observers told me the nose gear was oscillating about 90 degress from side to side. WOW,. This had never happened before. I flew home and made sure that the nose gear didn't touch down until it had to on its own. RE: Lots of back stick landing as I normally do. No vibration. I taxied back to the hanger very slowly with no abnormal vibration. Upon examination Sunday, I found that oil had somehow gotten between the Bellville washers and reduced the breakout force to 12 pounds. My partner explained to me I had the perfect storm come together. 1 Lubricant where there is supposed to be dry contact. 2. A tire that had become worn and was most likely out of balance. 3. Landing and putting the nose gear down at a higher than normal speed due to needing as short a rollout as possible. As I said this was very surprising as I had just done the conditional inspection and everything looked normal and the breakout force seemed correct with the gauge. What I neglected to do was disassemble the entire tire and fork mechanism at the inspection. I also measured the breakout force with the wheel and tire in place using the axle hole in the wheel pant. Not a good idea in retrospect. Anyway, alls well that ends well. New tire and tube, cleaning and drying everything that should be.