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I cannot recall exactly, Tracy seemed convinced that the engineering was sufficient, which I is another reason that I believe is was a problem with vibration at low power during descents. I vaguely recall that maybe at some point he started using bigger pins, but thats all I got.
Dave Leonard
Did Tracy ever publish a fix for this failure mode, and did ALL his models have this weakness? IOW, was there ever a -D model or when did the C begin the mods to overcome this weakness? M
Hi Dennis, This happened to me 3 times, Once with the older style weld, and then twice with the pin. After the pin sheared for the second time I sent it back to Tracy and he placed a second pin 90 deg to the first one. That fix has held up for a couple hundred hours including racing at Reno (appx 300h.p.). Of note, 2 of the failures occurred during long gradual descents at low power. The other occurred after a backfire during start-up. I have a suspicion that low power descents cause the prop and engine to alternately overrun each other causing a rapid hammering back and forth. This problem is made worse by the somewhat lax gear leash that Tracy designed into the PSRU. I believe that was a good choice for normal operation but may make things worse during periods when the plane is pushing the prop yet enough power is being produced to cause the torque to alternate directions. So in addition to the 2 pins, I now make sure that I keep adequate power applied throughout descents so that the torque remains positive. In steep descents idle power will probably allow the torque to remain negative which is also OK. Hope you are doing well, glad to hear that you are still flying. A machine shop should be able to place a new pin and machine a hole for a second pin. The shaft between the RX-8 engine and the reduction drive unit has a gear secured to the shaft with a steel pin. (The gear drives the planetary gear set). The steel pin sheared off allowing the gear to rotate on the shaft. I understand this has happened to others in the past. I’ve heard that several fixes were proposed or tried – welding the pin to the gear, doing more deforming of the pin at the gear surface or installing a tighter or larger pin. I have another new shaft/gear assembly I plan to install after I incorporate improvements. When the pin sheared the gear only rotated about 3/32 inch on the shaft. The two pieces of the pin outside the shaft were thrown out of the gear and apparently were chewed into very small particles by the planetary gear assembly. Any info. You may have will be highly appreciated! I have about 920 hours on my RX-8 engine in my RV-7A Dennis Haverlah 512-921-0636 Sent from Mail for Windows
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