REFLECTOR: Retractable Gear Issue--- long story

[John Dibble via Reflector]

Seems like if you put the plane on jacks and move the gear manually you 
should be able to feel where it is binding.

John

On 9/28/2014 1:26 PM, Jack Prock via Reflector wrote:
>
> HI,
>
> So I have been doing test flying of my new XL-RG and I was having an 
> issue with the oil not cooling. Turned out the Vernatherm was not 
> closing completely. Made every flight under 15 minutes, which was 
> frustrating. Anyway, this morning I went out to test my latest change 
> to see if the oil temp would stabilize. So within 15 minutes it was 
> steady at 220… YEA! It was nice to not be able to fly and not worry 
> about that.
>
> So after 20 minutes, oil temp steady, I decided to raise the landing 
> gear. Mind you, I had raised and lowered the gear probably 40 or 50 
> times over the past 8 years, and every time they came up and went down 
> perfectly. I had also made sure that the wheel wells had clearance, 
> since a friend had that issue in his Velo. So they came up great, I 
> was sitting fat, dumb and happy. I then went to lower them and they 
> lowered fine… or so I thought. I looked down and I had two yellow 
> lights on the rear gear. I looked back and they had lowered 90%, but 
> the over center arms had not locked. They were about 2 inches above 
> locking.
>
> I cycled them a half dozen more times, and every time the rear gear 
> would stop at the same point. I don’t have the rear cover panel on, so 
> I can easily see the gear arms. Man it was so frustrating to be 
> sitting there, be able to see them, and not crawl back there to push 
> them down the last two inches.
>
> So I flew around for a while and tried yanking on the yoke a bit to 
> see if I could get them to budge. Mind you I have about a total of 1 
> hour on the plane at this point, so I am still being very cautious 
> about any sudden movements of the control surfaces.
>
> Long story short I declared an emergency, and told somebody on the 
> ground to let 911 know there may be an issue with the gear. He got 
> them on the line but they didn’t send anyone out, since to the guy on 
> the ground it looked like the gear was down.
>
> Lincoln Ca is 6000+ feet long, so I had time to touch the gear on the 
> ground and try and get them to lock. And luckily, that is what 
> happened. I touched the left main, raised the plane up a few feet, and 
> I heard the gear lock. A quick look at the indicator lights and I had 
> 3 green. Landed uneventfully and felt very lucky this didn’t turn into 
> a very expensive flight.
>
> So now the question to the group. Does anyone grease the landing gear 
> bolts? Something is binding. Anyone have any experience with this? 
> There are 5 total joints in the rear gear landing mechanism and one of 
> them is binding when there is a rearward force being applied.
>
> I think the best way to test this moving forward is to lower the gear 
> with two people pulling ropes attached to the gear so that I can make 
> sure the gear isn’t binding with a rearward force.
>
> Anyone have any experience, guidance, snide comments?
>
> Jack
>
>
>
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