Wheel & Axle Construction

Date: 10 June 2002 - 16 June 2002

Chapter: 16.0 Wheels & Axles

Section: Landing Gear

Section 16.1 Wheels & Axles

13 October, 2002 - Chapter 16.1.1 - "Brake Lines & Cuffs"

The brake lines have been run down the gear legs inside of drinking straws, which are used as conduits in case we need to replace them later. The straws were then bonded down with micro and BID.

Brake Line in Straw, BID into Place

August, 2004 - Chapter 16.1.2 - "Install Main Gear Axles"

The main gear axle bolt holes were pre-drilled by the factory. However, we had to drill the backing plate, shown below, to which we will later mount the wheel pants. Also, we're mounting an optional phenolic pad between the axle and the gear leg to prevent excess brake heat from sinking into the gear leg and warping it.

Backing Plate

Next we set the axle toe angle with washers under the axle, and then the camber. We want 10 degrees of down angle, and 1" of kick in at the nose of the plane. We then build up a flox pad around the washers to hold this angle.

Setting the axle angle

Building the Axle Pad

Finished axle pad

Next we would install the brakes. At this point (after having test-fit the Matco brakes), we decided to order the Cleveland brake upgrade from the Velocity. This was primarily driven by the fact that the factory now apparently supplies these brakes as standard equipment, and the fact that I've never heard a complaint about the Clevelands. After talking to several Velocity pilots, I think that the Matcos would have been fine, but I'd rather be safe than sorry.

Dry-fitted Matco Brake

Cleveland Wheel and Brake Kit

We will finish installing the Cleveland brakes as soon as I can borrow a bead breaker to remove our tires from the Matco wheels..... Now I've mounted the tires onto the Cleveland wheels and started the conversion. The hardest part of the conversion was drilling two additional holes into the Cleveland mount. I know that doesn't sound too hard, but not being a machinist, trying to locate two holes from the Matco axle onto the mounting plate and get them drilled accurately was a pain. Also, since the Cleveland disk is part of the wheel, you have to disassemble the caliper to get the wheel on, which struck me as odd. Finally, the Cleveland interfered with my gear legs in an entirely different way than did the Matco, so I had to a lot of grinding under the brake to mount it. I probably should have just cut the leg, but I had a mental block on that....

Cleveland Mounting Plate on Axle

Cleveland Brake Mounted

Section 16.2 Nose Wheel Installation

July, 2002 - Chapter 16.2 - "Nose Wheel Installation"

Our nose gear came installed and assembled as part of our fast-build kit. However, we will need to set the tire pressure and the nylock nut on the bottom of the fork that sets the anti-shimmy pressure on the Belleville washers.

03/12/2010 So, you'll see from the pictures that I've added braided stainless lines to the brakes at the end of the leg. I mentioned this somewhere else, but I was afraid of the nylaflow getting UV exposure, and wanted something more durable. You'll also see that I added a large AL plate to keep the brake from radiating heat onto the leg, I also mention this somewhere else, but I highly recommend it as several Velocitys have had their gear weakened by proplonged exposure to this kind of heating. But mostly I want to talk about bleeding the brakes. What a pain. We've tried every auto bleeding system (vacuum and pressure) with limited success. Since we could never really get all of the air out of our system, and could never lock a brake, I did two things. First I removed our parking brake, which never got used and was sort of a pain to setup properly (to actuate in the cockpit), and second I bought an ATS aircraft brake bleeder. We still haven't come up with a fool-proof system, but this already a big improvement. It attaches to the bleeder with an ingenious slip-over-it-tighten-then-open-the-bleeder function that makes it possible to get a relatively dripless conenction at high pressure with a large pot of brake fluid. This baby can put the kind of pressure on the system that can move fluid fairly rapidly, and I think this is what you want. Then you need to move plenty of fluid, because air entrains the fluid, and if you don't basically turn over all of the fluid air will just come out of suspension tomorrow. So we rigged my old auto pressure bleeder to the resvoir side of the system by connection a 3/8"-3/8" pipe union to another bleeder, and connected the pressure pot to that resevoir bleeder to accept the fluid and started pumping. This seems to be working as after flushing a bunch of fluid (and tapping/banging the pedals vigoroursly-you want to do this because the master cylinders capture a lot of air) through the system we were left the next day with only one minor bubble.

ATS Brake Bleeder

New brake lines

08/15/2009 No new pictures, but the wing-to-strake junction is good to go, and the wings will be coming back off soon. We have a little fiddling with the cowling do do yet. The new SS flex brake lines have replaced the nylaflow on the legs, and the resevoir has been moved under the nose hatch. Along the way we put the "T" in front of the canard bulkhead so there's only one line going to the resevoir, and now it's easy to fill. Also, the new cast AL toe pedals are installed. We'll start installing the Reiff preheat system once the cowling work is done. Note on the pedals that I've added an extra 5/16" nut and some washers so we can crank the pedals down and still lock the top, as well as apply spring pressure to the brake pedal. Our pedals seemed a bit high, so this slight modification was helpful.

New cast aluminum toe pedals

Pedals installed

New brake lines

Brake resevoir move

New nose wheel

Over engineered standoff

~ End of Chapter ~ End of Section ~