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Yes, John - luck and a quick acting nephew {:>).
The only answer I can come up with is that the aluminum line suffered a fatigue
fracture which weakened the tube and the hydraulic pressure finally blew out the
chunk. The line has a loop to provide flexing as the caliper moves in and
out - but, flexing aluminum is not know for a long life. In all fairness,
there are many RVs flying with this configuration - so the break might be
attributed to my installation (stressing the line when I put the loop in it),
material weakness, some damage I did not notice, etc. Had over 300
landings before the failure.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, June 24, 2005 9:09 AM
Subject: [FlyRotary] Re: Brake Line
Incident Photos
Wow,
Ed!
You're luck the airplane wasn't consumed.
My
question - how did that big chunk get blown out of the brake
line?
Regards,
John
For those interested (and may not have seen them) ,
here are a few photos of my brake line fire incident.
Big chunk got blown out of brake line as can be
seen from Brakelines.jpg photo. Effect of resin burning seen on wheel
pant photos. Once the line broke, the next time I depressed the brake
pedal, a fireball from the wheel to over the wing resulted from spraying the
hydraulic fluid over the hot brake assembly. The flash point of the
fluid is only 240F! I am going to investigate some stuff with a bit
higher flash point {:>)
Ed
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