Landing Gear safety cables

[TimHicks]

I'm thinking about making new safety cables that are covered to prevent chafing of the bungees.

I had a pair of bungees break a couple of years ago. I'm extremely grateful that the safety cables did their job and prevented the bungee breakage from causing any damage to my airplane.
On the other hand, the safety cables contributed to the failure because they abraded the bungees (I had seen bungees beginning to fray about a week previously and made a mental note to change the bungees at the upcoming annual, which they didn't make).

I recognize that covering them prevents inspection. My IA is OK with this.

I'll still use small plastic zip-ties to hold the new cables away from the bungees and to assure that they catch the LG when needed. This worked well when I had the bungee breakage (the zip-ties break away).

You might notice in the picture that the loops in the ends of the new covered cables are too small. I forgot to communicate the importance of the loop size to the company who makes the cable. So I'm having them make new ones with the right-size loops

[M Towsley]

Re: Landing Gear safety cables

Tim,

I am not of the mind, or experience, to make new ones for my plane. I think I may need new ones made. Who is doing yours? Thank you!

[TimHicks]

Re: Landing Gear safety cables

I used Pacific Gulf, which is a cable place near where I work. It's kinda intimidating to bring my cables over there because they have enormous cable assemblies all over their yard.

http://www.pacificgulfwirerope.com/index.html

I bought all the supplies from Aircraft Spruce and brought it all over to them. Then they fabbed up the cables. When I was there the first time, they told me that I could have bought the cable and sleeves from them. They have all that in stock. But since I needed to supply the heat-shrink tube anyway, I went ahead and purchased more cables and sleeves and heat-shrink from Aircraft Spruce and brought it back to them to fab up.

They charged me less than $21 to fab the first set. I'm expecting them to charge me the same or less for this set (since I got the feeling that they accept some of the blame for the loops being too small). I paid about $22 to ACS for materials (per pair).

I'll probably pick up the 2nd set today. I'll ask them if they're interested in doing more or not.

[M Towsley]

Re: Landing Gear safety cables

Please do, Tim. I am interested and thank you for doing asking.

[TimHicks]

Re: Landing Gear safety cables

I hadn't seen this previously, but when I was looking at this thread, I saw the following thread at the bottom of the page in the "Similar Threads" section.

http://vb.taylorcraft.org/showthread.php?8982-tailwheel-leaf-spring-bracket-and-gear-safety-cables

It looks to me that Laz also covered his safety cables.

[M Towsley]

Re: Landing Gear safety cables

Ok, Tim. I have no clue what happened to that last sentence, but thank you for asking.

[TimHicks]

Re: Landing Gear safety cables

I picked up my new cables today.
They look very nice. This time they used a socket (that I supplied, pictured below) as a gauge to get the loops the right size. They said that worked much better and they were happy to have the gauge (socket).
They didn't charge me anything to make this second set.

I asked them if they would do it again. They said, "Yes."

I asked them if they would do it over the phone with someone from say, Illinois, and with shipping and they really did not want to do it that way. After exploring several scenarios with them, they told me that basically they only wanted to work the way that they did with me on this job (drop off and pick up the job in person).

They also have coated cable that has a clear plastic coating on it. They said that would be much easier on them. But I'm not sure it makes sense for airplanes because to make a loop, they use an oversize sleeve (to make room for the coating) and they squeeze the sleeve harder (sic). So the coating would be inside the splice. The clear coating appears to be a bit thicker than the heat-shrink tubing that I used.

So Marty or anyone else, if you want to discuss having Pacific Gulf make cables (with or without coating) for you, send me a PM and we'll discuss the logistics.