Doe's anybody have any experiance with this tailwheel. Aircraft spruce lists it as a tundra tailwheel. I would be using it on grass strips mostly with occasional sandbar, but not anything like the long props big rocks stuff.
I have had good and bad luck with them. Seem to work well on light tailed airplanes and not real good on heavy ones. Quality control is an issue in my opinion. I take them apart and inspect efore installation.
If you want to buy a used one in good condition,i have one for sale. i bought this tundra tailwheel with other items from a wrecked pa12. I can send pictures. $175.00+shipping
Cool photo gallery, Jason- the T-Craft looks great on them 26" BW's! What'd they do to the performance?
From Jason's pic as well as the Spruce catalog pic, it looks like the P8B tailwheel doesn't have a grease fitting. A friend of mine runs a P8A tailwheel, and had some shimmy trouble. What he did was to remove the grease fitting & installed a "button" (he used a rivet) behind it to serve as a friction damper. He just cranked the grease fitting down onto the button bit-by-bit until he got rid of the shimmy. Not an approved mod I'm sure, but it worked for him. I think if I went that route I'd use a teflon button, drill/tap the grease fitting hole for a machine screw to tighten down against the button, and make the screw long enough to put a nut on the exposed threads to lock it down when I got it where I wanted it.
I think the P8B uses bearings unlike the smaller Maule tailwheels that are bushed. I beat that thing over 4-5" rocks, and it still feels like new on smooth pavement. Might not be a tough as a Scott 3200, but for this light plane its frigin great and only $350 + its PMA'ed for the Tcraft.
26" tires, flat 74-42 prop and the tiny A65 gets me about 85-90 mph, 250' take-0ff at 4.5 gph of auto fuel.
Jason,
I had problems with cracking/broke tailsprings on my Rans experimental S-7 Courier. Then I remembered my previous BC-12D was the exact same gross weight with similar tail weights: I got a T-Craft spring and the problem was solved. What a great old bird, and as you point out, still hard to beat for economical cruising, hard to believe what it does on 65 horse.
Courierguy
Wow Jason, that's pretty damn good performance on only 65 horses, especially considering the big draggy tires. I was mainly curious about the performance difference between the BW's and your old 850's?
Jerry, If your tailwheel geometry checks out in accordance with this http://www.pierceaero.net/tws.php you can tighten the swivel nut to make the tailwheel a little harder to swivel. My guess is your tailwheel spring has sagged and thrown the geometry off. Let me know what you find.
Thanks for the offer Frenchy but a buddy has one at the local airport I will likey buy it. Hows your project going and how does that ebay starter work?
Hi Dan!
I didn`t worked on the project last summer ,i will begin on the wings in about a month.I didn`t try the sarter yet,my engine is not ready to crank.
How about your 2+2?
Jason,
Rans S-7 Courier experimental, in kit production since '87, 105 cruise and can slow fly with ultralights. I had a buddy with a 100 horse BC-12D and we had similar cruise specs, though my get off and up was better. Another buddy of mine flew his Helio into a tiny strip on the west fork of the Salmon River, it was extremely impressive to see that bug a plane in that small a strip!
BTW,when I built new wings for my BC-12D I used the old (non air-worthy) spars to make the best damn pair of saw horses ever, they are still providing service 12 years later.