Gear pivots

[Wayne G. O'Shea]

Bob, No I don't have bushings in my gear legs. Just the plain old hole drilled thru the tube. I would strongly suggest to everyone to use the solid blocks available with bushings or even just make a solid block to get more bearing surface as I am going to do before I reinstall. The only problem that I have had with the main legs is when I sheared all the rivets out of my passenger door post, when I dropped in on one ski(from about 6' up-you know the event) while avoiding an icehut and a snowmobile. (Remember I am the initiator of the double rivet row up the door posts!) (and maybe Rob didn't have power on when he went in the lake??!!)When I inspected the gear closely I had bent the leg about 7" up from the axle. Not very noticable unless you put the 7" section on a table and held it tight to see the other end 3" off the table! The pivot hole was also elongated about 50%, I suspect just from the upward force of impact at about 3g's. This is why I am going to solid blocks, although I am probably a little worried this will cause the bigger bandaid problem. That is,before the leg took the damage and now it may cause airframe damage! Hopefully I have enough time in these things now that I will never find out! I will also note for others reading this, that I rarely fly off pavement! My strip is grass, although smooth enough that Howard comes in for gas every week in his amphib,but most places I go are rough grass strips, farm fields etc. (even my first trip to the Rebel Ramble saw me in a farmers field sitting in a combine waiting for the rain to stop!)

As for the rubber biscuit gear, the pucks are a real pain in the ass to keep in place even with cuppedwashers. They ooze out all the time. I see on the real thing rip off(well it is different, from the shine it's made out of 2024) the pucks are retained by 4 guide rods. These will work for about 4 landings then the pucks will be out rubbing on the guides and be chewed up. Rubber pucks have a shock absorberefficiency of 60% compared to 50% for steel springs. 10% better but hard to control in the way we need them to work. The main thing when using steel is not to bottom them out, or they work like a slide hammer in the body shop. Mine need to hit at 4 1/2 g's to bottom. At that rate its not the plane I'm worried about. The nicest use off rubber I have seen is on my UTVA 66 Yugoslavian Ex-Military Planes. The gear pivots similar to the rebel but compresses 3-2"thickX5"x10" rubber blocks, out and above the leg. You can drop it in from 5 0r 6 feet and not even knowyou landed.They are retained by 2 bolts thru the center line of the blocks. Unfortunately the rebel dosn't have the structure to adapt this or it would be done already!

As you know Bob I have a complete set of photos, from start to finish and various other shots from start to finish on every step in a Rebel. If someone is stuck I may have the picture you need to get going again! As far as I know, outside of the factory, I have put more quality Rebels in the air (or back into the air) than any other builder. As our ad reads we've been there, Done that!

Blue Skies, Wayne