It may be that your cylinders need cleaning out. It is my understanding
that when delivered new, most of the Europa supplied finger brake
cylinders had a good deal of grey 'gunge' in them hidden in various
places. Neville tells me it is buffing soap, used to polish the
cylinders. It took me quite a long time to get this out of mine
originally and when I stripped them down again last week after approx.
100 hours flying I found that more seemed to have appeared. This stuff
can cause the pistons to stick and the brakes to become stiff.
I have stripped my cylinders down, cleaned them thoroughly again,
replaced the piston & seal assemblies (supplied by Europa) and replaced
all the silicone fluid in the system. My brakes are quite smooth to
operate now and don't need much pressure to become effective.
You might also check the stiffness of your shimmy damper. If set too
stiff, you have to haul on the brakes quite hard to persuade the
nosewheel to change direction.
Richard Iddon G-RIXS
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-europa-list-server@matronics.com
[mailto:owner-europa-list-server@matronics.com] On Behalf Of
peter.rees05@ntlworld.com
Subject: Re: RE: Europa-List: Finger Brake cylinder seals
I have finger brakes though they seem more like hand brakes as you have
to really pull them hard to make them work at all let alone have any
finesse with them. I think they came with the tri conversion kit from
Europa (not too sure as I didn't do the work)
Are you able to operate your brakes with a reasonable degree of ease?
Mine have very little feel to them (the levers move forward with ease by
about an inch or so but when you pull them from the rest position, they
need a good hard pull before they do much at all. It really spoils the
ground handling.
Are they all like this, is it just due to the type of cylinder thats
been used on my setup or do I have a 'dud'?
Peter
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