I'm in the middle of doing my annual on the KR and this morning I started on the landing gear. I pulled the wheels and repacked the bearings and checked the brake pads. We've had discussions in the past on toe-in / toe-out so I'll share some observations with you. I set my gear to zero toe-in / toe-out. I noticed this morning how well my tires are holding up. I checked the logs and I have 167 hours flight time on these tires and guess double that number of TO's / landings given my type of flying. I used my caliper and found the tread depth on inside and outside are within .010 inch of each other. Amazing! Given my setup my KR taxis like a nose dragger and has excellent ground handling. I have time in a Cessna 140, Cessna 170, Supper Decathlon, Piper J-4, Aeronca Chief, and a Murphy Rebel and my KR handles better than any of these by a factor of 10. I can't sing the praises of how well my KR handles on the ground and in T.O. and landing loudly enough. If I were building again I'd use exactly the same setup. As always, your results may vary.
Other items noted: I set my tire pressure on the last annual to 25 pounds. I've not touched them in a year and today they each had 21.5 pounds of air measured with digital pressure gauge. It has also been 15 years and 700 hours since I filled the brake lines and I've not touched them since. This bird is amazing reliable. I hope my boasting doesn't give the gremlins a key to my hangar this evening. To other builders using the Matco pneumatic tailwheel, when installing the tire on the rim, coat the tire bead and rim with glue from a tire patch kit. I was having tailwheel flats and that solved the problem for me. No flats in two years, same tire and tube.
Larry Flesner _______________________________________________ Search the KRnet Archives at https://www.mail-archive.com/krnet@list.krnet.org/. Please see LIST RULES and KRnet info at http://www.krnet.org/info.html. see http://list.krnet.org/mailman/listinfo/krnet_list.krnet.org to change options. To UNsubscribe from KRnet, send a message to krnet-le...@list.krnet.org
