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tomcostanza

Well Known Member
I've been reading with much interest, the recent threads about Barry's nose gear collapse, and have been considering a Grove nosewheel. While I thought I understood the wheel & tire sizes, it's clear I don't. My main tires are marked 5.00-5, and the nose tire is marked 11x4.00-5. What do these numbers tell me? I thought the 4.00 meant I had a 4" nose wheel, but Grove suggested a wheel that they describe as 500x5 Type III. Does this mean my Van's supplied tire won't fit a Grove wheel?

I'm so confused!
 
Nice worksmanship, but I'm not really convinced that a -10 fork on the -A will do anything good. More weight might change the harmonic galloping a little, but extra gear clearance is minimal, and the gear leg is just as flexy as before.
 
Another alternative

tomcostanza said:
I've been reading with much interest, the recent threads about Barry's nose gear collapse, and have been considering a Grove nosewheel. While I thought I understood the wheel & tire sizes, it's clear I don't. My main tires are marked 5.00-5, and the nose tire is marked 11x4.00-5. What do these numbers tell me? I thought the 4.00 meant I had a 4" nose wheel, but Grove suggested a wheel that they describe as 500x5 Type III. Does this mean my Van's supplied tire won't fit a Grove wheel?

I'm so confused!
Click to expand...

Tom,
Another option would be to buy a used Cleaveland nose wheel. This is what I did. I found a RV-6A owner who had his beloved aircraft totaled by a careless fuel truck operator. This happened less than 10 hours after his annual condition inspection, which included new tires and tubes on all wheels. Put a wanted to buy (WTB) up on all the various RV bulletin boards.
Charlie Kuss
 
osxuser said:
Nice worksmanship, but I'm not really convinced that a -10 fork on the -A will do anything good. More weight might change the harmonic galloping a little, but extra gear clearance is minimal, and the gear leg is just as flexy as before.
Click to expand...
Your thoughts may be true concerning the spring harmonics of the flexing landing gear leg. However, with the latest nose over in San Diego being the exception, most of the nose over incidents have been due to the nose gear fork coming into contact with the ground or some other obstacle and basically stabbing itself into the ground to then force the nose gear leg to serve as a pole vault pole.

The RV-10 fork and larger wheel and tire serve to not only increase the clearance distance between the ground and the fork, the larger wheel size also helps with the rolling diameter of that wheel when it does have to roll over some hole, obstruction or bump on the ground. This has to help in most situations where the smaller nose wheel would have problems.

I can't help but think about the many times I have used a furniture dolly with small diameter hard rubber narrow wheels and tried to roll it across a soft grass yard. These dollies were not made for that task. However, you take that same dolly and place larger diameter fat tires filled with air and you can then roll your load across pretty much any terrain.

My point is this mod has to be a better all around design if the builder wishes to taxi, maneuver, take-off or land on surfaces that are not always smooth pavement.
 
I agree that it's better, but probably only marginally so. I'm wishing for a -10 fork (5.00x5) that has the same geometry as the new -A fork, even more ground clearance. I first looked at doing this a year and a half ago, but scrapped the idea in favor of going with a complete -10 style gear leg, complete with rubber doughnuts and maybe oleo dampeners as well...

... then got tired of all the 'theres no problem with the -A gear' quotes and dropped the whole idea.
 
-10 style Nose gear on a -7?? Hmmm.

Can someone email/post the drawing for the RV-10 nose gear assembly? Will the -10 nose strut fit in my -7 mount? How much more will it weigh? Good Idea!

-Ron
[email protected]
 
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