Landing gear

My landing gear looks like a knock knee'd cowboy, the camber is so bad the tires are wearing very quickly on outer edge..my question for all of you out there in advice land...Van's sells shims to correct the camber, they are in 1 degree increments..so has anyone used them and how many were needed...they are $25.00 each so would not like to order more then I need...and yes the toe in is correct.....thanks for help

shims

I followed Vans proceedure and mine was right on so did not need them. With 2 people and full fuel this should help having the wheels wear more in the center.

Wear on the outside edges of the main tires is normal for the RV-12 and other airplanes with similarly designed main gear configurations. Check that your wheels are aligned in accordance with Van's plans. As RedBaron noted, at higher operating weights your wear may prove to be more even. I suspect that most of us have resigned ourselves to flipping over the tires halfway through their use to even out wear and yield longer tread life.

The shims are for adjusting the toe-in/toe-out, as your's is already correct you should not need any. There is no camber adjustment and Van's has recommended not messing with it to everyone who wants to "fix" it.

John Salak
RV-12 N896HS
120116

Thanks

Thanks for suggestions, however keeping the tank full and hauling a passenger around just to keep landing gear in alignment does not seem to be the solution I was looking for....I have owned many planes and this one by far is eating the tires faster on outer edge...and you can plainly see it with canted angle...even passers bye comment on it...and at RV 12 fly ins you see them all over the place...

When you say "eating tires", what do you mean exactly? How many hours and more importantly how many landings on them? Have they been rotated and when?

Tire wear

Outside tire wear is normal. When the plane is in the air the camber is tipped inward. At touch down the outside hits first at the highest speed of the landing. Most wear occurs then, as you rollout the weight adjust camber to a more tire on the runway attitude. I flip my tires at annual to wear both sides. Monster retreads wear a lot better than the stock tires.

If you touch down at too high an airspeed, you will wear out the tires quickly. As others have noted, IF the toe is correct, you don't need the shims and changing the camber will not improve the tire wear. I suspect that either the toe is off or the tires are underinflated and the speed too high.

I had to use shims on my gear to get the toe "close". I bought two shims but only used one. I still have a slight toe out on one wheel, but it is less than what one shim can correct, so close enough. At 240 hours, my tires still look good. the wear is even with plenty of tread showing yet.

f1rocket said:

If you touch down at too high an airspeed, you will wear out the tires quickly.

Click to expand...

A fairly common issue (and not just with RV-12 pilots), particularly when someone is new to the airplane.
The RV-12 is easily capable of touching down at sub 45 kt speeds if flown properly.

In the several RV12 rides I have taken, I noticed that almost always the pilots would NOT use any flaps, and touch down at higher speeds. I always tried to save tires by using the flaps and touching down at minimum speed.
Does the 12 have some characteristics that makes it easier to land without flaps?

Other than in training when No Flap landings are practiced, my normal RV-12 landings are made with Full Flaps. The advantages of Full Flap landings include: a better runway sight picture (due to lower nose position), lower touch-down speed (less wear and tear on brakes, landing gear, etc.), less landing roll-out distance, enhanced glide control on final, etc. I have found that lateral flaperon control is very good with Full Flaps and 50-55 knots in the flare. Even in strong gusty crosswinds, I tend to use Full Flaps for the landing and then retract the Full Flaps shortly after touchdown. As they say, YMMV.

Ditto what David said. I can't see any reason to not use flaps when landing unless some special circumstances dictate otherwise.

Too much tow-in can scrub tires very quickly for sure.

tow-out can make for squirly handling, so I'd say a little extra tow-in (which wants to make the plane go straight) and tire wear is better than tow-out with squirly handling on landings.

Toe-in can be easily set with string and a measuring tape. My string-set alignments were better than my professional alignments I paid for on my race cars.

I thought that under certain conditions, like crosswind, that one might want to land with just one click of flaps and land a little faster so as to have a little more speed and control in case you got blown funny by a crosswind.

If in a crosswind situation, you come creeping in at minimum speed, it seems to me you'd have less time/energy to react and recover from anything funny that crosswind conditions may throw at you.

I'm new though, so these are just my thoughts. I DID stay at a Holiday Inn last night though, so, well, you know.