Tire wear?

With 51 hours (and lots more landings) on 143WM I have about half the tread left on the outside edges of the tires. I'll reverse them at the condition inspection but expect to get not much more than a couple of years life from the mains. Is this about what everyone is seeing or do I need to put some vertical shims in the ssyem to make the wheels more vertical?

Wayne 120241

Tire wear

It is normal wear on the tires of spring steel gear for the outside to wear first. With no weight on the gear the gear springs down during flight and the outside of the tire touches the runway first during landing.(like when you first put the aircraft on the gear it looked a little funny with the airplane sitting on the outside of the tires) So the outside of the tire gets skidded a little with every landing during wheel spin up. That little chirp you hear on landing is when the rubber hits the runway and you leave a little rubber behind. It's not a function of time, but landings and the type of surface you are landing on. Just rotate the tires when you think it looks about the right time.

Tire Wear

That seems a little accelerated to me. After 122 hours and 143 landings, all on paved runways, I have little to no visible tread wear on my tires. The above explanation is absolutely correct, but it should take longer than 50 hours, unless you're doing nothing but touch and goes.

My tires are wearing even, may be a little more on the outside.

I was sitting at an airport waiting for a commercial flight watching big planes land. There is a large puff of smoke from the tires as they touch down. I wondered why they don't get them to spin up to speed before touch down. Seems to me it would save tens of thousands of dollars in maintenance for the tires and gear. Simple little "wings" attached to the tires to get them to begin to rotateafter tthe gear is lowered.

There is a million dollar idea for someone.

You are welcome.

We did, Larry

Engineers at Wright-Patt looked at a variety of ways to spin the tires up before landing. About the only efficient wayto do that was to put vanes on the wheels to spin them. The problem with that was they wanted to keep spinning as you retratcted them and it caused a lot more brake wear. In the ling term, replacing tires was more cost-effective than replacing brakes.

As a follow-up to my question, MATCO had us set the drag on the bearings pretty high-- you couldn't actually spin the tires. I'm wondering if that's causing more tire wear.

Wayne 120241

Tire wear

IMHO I agree with everything said here so far is right. Your tire wears more than his tire and so and so on, that would be called his landing technique is different than your technique and so on and so on. Two years usage on a tire that is being flown 100 hrs a year is great. Mine is wearing slightly on the out side edge to with 150 hrs on them. Mine should easily last 2 years. As Larry would say go fly and have fun!

The tires that are supplied by Van's are light in weight and are very cost effective but they do not last very long, they do last longer on the RV-12 but on the bigger RV's 50 hours is about it. When you replace them with top quality tires like Goodyear Flight Custom III tires they will last for a good long time. It is just a function of light weight less expensive tires compared to higher quality tires, you get what you pay for.

Best regards,
Vern

What I am seeing - -

Our airport is all new. New 5500' strip. Concrete is slightly rough, and it is wearing the tires on the outside edge. I reversed them at annual ( roughly 200 hours ), and they were getting down a lot on the outside edges. Not smooth, but not much left.

John Bender

Also of course tire wear depends on how much you taxi. I taxi about 100 yards to the runway at home. If I go to Ft Worth Meacham or Love Field, I taxi forever. Tire wear is still good.

Pete