Tail Wheel

I have a stock Van's tail wheel which the other day I decided to put more grease into. Well the zert grease fitting was defective I thought as there was not spring loaded ball in the center of the fitting no way to take it out as it is pressed into the hub.
I called Vans, they stated you must have an old tailwheel as the new ones do not have a grease fitting, and the bearings are already packed. They also stated that you would not want to fill up the wheel hub anyway because of the amount of grease in the hub.
They suggested to order a new tail wheel and another set of bearings since they are only 6 dollars.

Yesterday I received the new tailwheel. Same as I have with the zert fitting with out the center spring loaded ball in it. It won't keep grease I it either. WHAT gives? About ready to send it back to Vans and go another vendor. This was not suppose to have a grease fitting.

I have just over 300 landings on the tailwheel and it is flat across the thread. Bit there is probably 7/8 tread left.a

Any suggestions, I have a FLYBOY tailwheel mount.

Smilin' Jack

Buy DJM tail wheel. They have sealed bearings. All I do is clean it every now and then.

As Bill said, they all use sealed bearings. You can't put grease in a sealed bearing with a zerk fitting. Stop trying to grease something you can't grease.

Clean all the grease out. Wipe off the sealed bearings and reassemble. If one of the bearings gos out then replace that bearing. No grease needed.

Smilin' Jack said:

I have just over 300 landings on the tailwheel and it is flat across the thread. Bit there is probably 7/8 tread left.

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That wheel is just about broken in now.

As others have stated, you can't grease these bearings, just replace them every few hundred hours or buy a new wheel with bearings. Think I've replaced the wheel once and the bearings three times in fifteen years. I have the old wheel with fresh bearings on the bench for a spare.

We have two tailwheel tires to choose from, both are no-maintance, sealed bearings, with durable tread. One is the DJM tire.

I am on my second Van's cheapo tail wheel in 900 hours. Sure you could buy the better model but since you already have the cheapo version go ahead and use it. Do not inject grease through the zerk though as you will have your hub full and will throw grease everywhere since the bearings are not sealed. Pull the tail wheel, pop the bearings out and hand grease them. Clean off the excess and reassemble. I only do that at annuals and use grease sparingly. Maybe next time around I'll buy the quality tail wheel but it will be a long time from now as even the cheapo lasts for many landings

DJM Tailwheel

I just installed the DJM tailwheel today. Got it from Van's as he had them in stock and for less than others too. (Everywhere else I looked the websites said they were not in stock.) I have the Doug Bell tail fork and it did require 2 extra AN960-616 washers as noted in Van's catalog (not included with wheel). Fortunately I had some of these in my parts inventory.

The wheel is such an improvement over the old style wheel. I immediately noticed a much smoother ride, and it seems to offer more cushion when the tail comes down (RV-8). Wish I had done this sooner. It's a nice upgrade.

Chris

BTW, I spoke with Doug Bell at Airventure and he has transferred the manufacturing rights to the tail fork. I forget the supplier but it's one familiar to us in vansairforce.net. So the supply will continue. I have used this fork since early in the Doug Bell production era and it has performed well.

The $74 "Deluxe" composite tailwheel from Flyboy Accessories is also a good one. It has sealed, replaceable bearings too and weighs significantly less than the stock Vans tailwheel. It's not as sexy looking as the machined aluminum DJM tailwheel but costs a lot less. I'm very happy with mine.
Maybe someday I'll upgrade to the DJM wheel but for now this one is working very well on my RV-6.

Chris,

We're the ones who have the honor of continuing production of Doug Bell's tailwheel fork. We're getting the tooling, and techniques transferred and underway right now. It will be several weeks before the first batch is ready.

In the meantime, if anyone is interested on having their name added to the queue, drop me an email at [email protected]

Thanks,
Vince