Bad timing...

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
oups.com...
...
During the preflight I spotted a wet mark under the right wheel pant.
Pointing this out to Mary, we both figured that it was the slush and
ice from inside the wheel pant melting in the 40-degree sunshine. We
had heard an "ice ball" bouncing around in the wheel pant after our
last landing, so I "hmph'd" and moved on...

Your first problem is that you drive decent cars. If you always drove junk,
you would know that step 1 for _any_ puddle is to stick a finger in it to
see what it is - water, oil, etc. Touch, color, and smell will nearly always
identify the fluid. One rarely has to resort to taste.

...
Strangely, we had changed that O-ring maybe six months ago, and the
pads were fine, then, so we now have a mystery. How did the brake
pads wear completely away so fast? To be safe, we removed the OTHER
wheel pant (more screws, nuts, banged heads) and inspected the left
brakes, and they are fine. Tons of pad left in them.

Disk brakes rely on rotor runout to push the pads back just a bit do you
don't have the pads in constant contact. If the new O ring was a bit on the
tight side, and the piston was sticking (the O ring could have worked like a
spring) then the pad would drag all the time the wheel was turning and wear
out quite quickly.

Your second problem is that you fly too much. Airplanes sitting in the
hanger don't wear out.

...
But we're still wondering what/how this happened, especially since the
ONLY time we lock the brakes to make a turn is at our hangar, and that
would be a hard LEFT turn. We NEVER turn hard right, so why should
that brake wear so quickly?

Hard, brake locked, turns won't wear the inside pads - they are locked. No
movement, no wear.

Anyone know if it's possible for a brake to hang up and not release,
resulting in advanced wear like this?

As noted above.

Or should I keep blaming Mary
for riding the (right) brake?

That is likely to work as well as me denying that I snore at night.

Your third problem is that your wife (like most) is smarter than you and
blaming her generally backfires.

--
Geoff
The Sea Hawk at Wow Way d0t Com
remove spaces and make the obvious substitutions to reply by mail
When immigration is outlawed, only outlaws will immigrate.

Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe wrote:
"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
oups.com...

Strangely, we had changed that O-ring maybe six months ago, and the
pads were fine, then, so we now have a mystery. How did the brake
pads wear completely away so fast? To be safe, we removed the OTHER
wheel pant (more screws, nuts, banged heads) and inspected the left
brakes, and they are fine. Tons of pad left in them.

Disk brakes rely on rotor runout to push the pads back just a bit do you
don't have the pads in constant contact. If the new O ring was a bit on the
tight side, and the piston was sticking (the O ring could have worked like a
spring) then the pad would drag all the time the wheel was turning and wear
out quite quickly.

Actually, disk brakes are designed such that the deformation of the
seals causes the pads to slightly retract when pressure is released. I
suspect that the seals on Jay's brakes had hardened to the point that
they didn't deform when the brakes were applied and thus could not
"spring back" to pull back the pads.

Rotor run-out will certainly help push the pads back in, but that isn't
how they are designed to operate. Disk brakes will work just fine even
if the rotor is completely true with no run-out.


Matt