Tailwheel

[rdwater]

After a year and a half of restoration, I'm finally starting to assemble 96924! I've attached the tailwheel springs and Maule wheel on my BC-12D as described in the Taylorcraft newsletter, so I believe that the springs are in the right position. However, the swivel axle is not vertical, with the top of the swivel aft of the bottom and the angle aft of vertical is about 15 - 20 degrees. So when I push her backward, the tail wheel rotates 180 degrees and tends to want to stay that way. Should that swivel axle be vertical and if so, how do I get it that way? Would shims work? This would be a serious amount of shims. Thanks for any thoughts and ideas. Bob

[jgerard]

Re: Tailwheel

I think vert or slightly aft is prefered over fwd.

Jason
N43643

[VictorBravo]

Re: Tailwheel

Although it will require a field approval, I strongly recommend the Matco brand swiveling tailwheel. I have used them on the Auster and my last BC-12D. It is a huge improvement over Maule or Scott tailwheels in my opinion. The reason is that the operating mechanism, swivel feature, and particularly the lock-unlock mechanism is just plain better. On the Maule and Scott units, there are some small, highly loaded parts that get worn out and make the whole thing more difficult. The locking and unlocking mechanisms are somewhat delicate and prone to being affected by things like vertical axis and the wear of small parts. The Matco is bullet proof and has no small parts to wear out. The wearing surfaces are large, the pieces of the locking mechanism are beefy, and it is completely field-serviceable without special order parts. The Matco is the big old GM pickup truck to the Maule and Scott's Hyundai It will be worth doing the 337 in my opinion, and I plan to do just that when my Maule unit wears out.

Bill

[Forrest Barber]

Re: Tailwheel

The "caster" angle should be vertical or forward at the bottom a wee bit..check her loaded and it should not trail back of vertical... Maybe the springs need re arced ??? Never saw shims needed.... picture??

[Mark Julicher]

Re: Tailwheel

I flew and worked on a T-craft with a caster as described. It was hard to taxi and squirrely to say the least. The tail wheel would tend to lock over at 90 degrees in a tight turn. We sometimes used ALL of the runway on landing. In other words, I could tell you the wattage written on the runway lights. Yuk. The last straw was when I taxiied out to the runup spot and had to exit the plane and kick the tailwheel straight--talk about embarrasing.

I used shims (about 3/4 inch) to fix this plane. But If I knew who or how to re-arc a tail spring I would gladly have done that. It seems to me a person would need a huge vice and a 10 foot cheater bar and a come-along and maybe a sumo wrestler to bend the springs.

[Robert Lees]

Re: Tailwheel

If you have a good smithy nearby, he will heat it, bend it and then re-temper to the correct material properties.
We had this done 10 years ago...much cheaper than new springs.

[Marv]

Re: Tailwheel

20 years ago I had to install a shim in a 46 BC-12-D- and as far as I know it is still in there. It fixed the problem ans only cost a dollar at that time. Marv