No brakes and Flaps extending to far.

I think I know the answer but it baffled myself and the mechanic.

I had been losing braking ability on the left Main Brake. Thought maybe I needed to bleed the brakes and took it to the shop. When I got there the A&P thought the o-ring was shot (IT was). We then replaced it and bled the left brakes, put the cowlings back on an took it for short spin. Problem not solved. Left brake still barely working. Back to the shop, put on new brake pads, and the left brake still didn't work! At that point I jumped into the Co-pilot seat (very strange to sit there after 250hr in the Left Seat) and at that point the Left brake worked but the Right did not! And of course I had put all the cowlings back on and had to take them all off again.

Well the owner of the shop came in and we talked about it a bit and then decided that we needed to start from scratch, this time bleeding both sides. They now work like a charm!


FLAPS

Twice now in the last month or so I have landed and noticed the flaps have over extended and won't retract without causing some damage. Is there a limit switch on the electric flap assembly? Or what could be causing the leading edge of the flap to rotate out of from the trailing edge of the wing?

Jon

Jon,

On the flaps, it could be the bearing may be spinning out of the flap motor rod, there is an SB about safety wiring this I think. On the 14 its part of the instructions.

Just a thought.

If I read and understood the post correctly, this is not a bearing issue that is caused by lack of safety wire, although a very good advise to check and make sure the safety wire is present.

Jon
You can install a limit switch and it is not too difficult to limit the flap travel beyond a certain point, a micro switch is the easiest way to accomplish this. Also a strong word of caution that if your flap goes down far enough that the leading edge of the flap skin could pop out of the trailing edge of the wing and you try to retract it, you will be up for a very ugly and hard to repair damage if not done by the assistance of another person to guide the skin back to place.

If it was my plane, I would first make sure that all flaps were rigged correctly and this most likely will prevent your flap goes beyond the point that the skin could pop out. Double check the length of your flap connecting rods, bearing to bearing. If the flaps were rigged correctly, then I would make sure the forward skin on the flaps were rolled just enough that it would not pop out if they were lowered too far. Lastly I would install a micro switch to limit the travel of the flap so the forward skin on the flap could not ever pop out.
The final check is that to lower the flaps to the lowest possible point, then by hand put a gentle push on the flaps to the downward direction. Observe and make sure the flexing in the flaps will not cause the forward skin to pop out.
Hope this helps.

Jonathan Alvord said:

....snip...

FLAPS

Twice now in the last month or so I have landed and noticed the flaps have over extended and won't retract without causing some damage. Is there a limit switch on the electric flap assembly? Or what could be causing the leading edge of the flap to rotate out of from the trailing edge of the wing?

Jon

Click to expand...

It happened to me and it did damage the trailing edge of the right wing because I did not see it in time. The solution was a small adjustment in the arm that lowers the flaps. Of course, that doesn't solve the damage, just prevents the flaps from dropping too low again.

hevansrv7a said:

It happened to me and it did damage the trailing edge of the right wing because I did not see it in time. The solution was a small adjustment in the arm that lowers the flaps. Of course, that doesn't solve the damage, just prevents the flaps from dropping too low again.

Click to expand...

I am sorry to hear about your incident, this is exactly what I was talking about in the above post.

I will look into the arm adjustment on Weds. Still trying to figure out why it happened though. Was it due to strong crosswind landing, Hard landing (I don't recall any recent hard landings). Why now? and only occasionally? Maybe the arm adjustment will do the trick.
Jon