GyroRon
Former Gyro know it all
- Joined
- Oct 29, 2003
- Messages
- 16,888
- Location
- Fort Mill South Carolina
- Aircraft
- Vans RV4 / Dominator 582 Ultrawhite
- Total Flight Time
- ALOT
Mine is 2 hours shy of 100 hours total time.
Mine is 2 hours shy of 100 hours total time.
Hello Ron,
How many hours since you replaced a clutch?
Jason
Jason,
Did you have to run the clutch or could you have run it with just the Lovejoy coupling?
I never ran it without the clutch. I Know that both Ron and Todd ran their engines without the clutch and from those expierences, they determined that a clutch was necessary. I do believe that they were using something close to the stock rotax flywheel and using the stock Rotax rubber donut.
Jason
Hello Ron,
How many hours since you replaced a clutch?
Jason
First off, my clutch has never failed. What was happening was the grooves the springs ride in broke apart on the first set of shoes at about 60 hours tt, and the clutch would not disengage fully. It still turned the prop and still flew just fine. Matter of fact, the whole time I was in florida at Bensen Days last year, the clutch had this issue, yet I flew another 15 or so hours while there with my " broken " clutch.
at about 75 hours tt I replaced the clutch shoes and springs with a new set. That lasted all of about 30 minutes before the clutch was dragging again and Once I tore it apart I discovered on of the springs had broke. I had flown it another 4-5 hours that day of the spring failure before I took it apart.
At roughly 80 hours tt, I took the gyro out of service and decided to replace the entire clutch assembly. I pulled my old clutch drive body off, and installed one of Racers centering rings on my engine back plate. Airscooter then took my old clutch drive body and after a few months made up a batch of new ones, Hardened and with closer tolerances that Racer specified. When airscooter came out to install the drive body we ran a dial indicator on it and it was serverely out of round. He pulled it off and a few weeks later brought me another one to try out. It too was not perfectly straight and true, but was within comfortable tolerances. I installed a new set of shoes and springs and bolted it all up and so far it has gone almost 18 hours without failure.
My gyro hasn't flown since late October, the exhaust has had some leaks in it and I have been too busy to work on it till now. I have a list of things on the gyro to do besides the exhaust in prep for it's annual condition inspection. Pulling the gearbox and inspecting the clutch is on my list of things to do.
Hi Todd
In post 139 WAYYY back you talked about the use of the belt reduction unit. Did you ever make any feasability descisions? Just wondering if it was possible to get the desired prop rpms out of this setup and if so - wouldn't this be a realitively easy way to achieve a higher thrustline tractor configuration package?
repost of the photo:
Todd:
Exactly what is used as the clutch? I see "Yamaha clutch" written here, what is that? Really a Yamaha clutch? What is used for originally?
Greg