Pro Drive
Main Rotor
Aligner Block and Thrust Block
Delron Bushings
Our main rotor blade parts
We had the elastomeric bearings go out at 87 hours of flight time caused from what we think is grease contamination from what we can tell.
While we
we're replacing them we also replaced the pitch pin needle bearings
with a new setup from Pro-Drive that uses Delron bushings rather than
the traditional needle bearings thus putting grease totally out of
the picture.
The
down side
to
using this type of setup is you just about have to have an
electronic balancer to set the ship back up unless you want to be out
there tweaking the blades forever lol.
The plastic
bushings fit very snugly
so you
can't do a traditional lead lag adjustment because the blades can't teeter
freely like
they did with the factory needle bearings.
The upsides are
no grease and no need to ever replace the pitch pins because the plastic doesn't put ridges into them. No ridges means no fracture risk on the pin and no seizing of the pitch pin bearings on the pin. An example of what could happen would be the pin obtaining severe ridges and the needle bearing deteriorating to the point that is literally turns itself into a sprag clutch chomping down hard on the pin causing a fracture of the pin itself. This is my understanding of it all and I may be incorrect on a couple of points so give John a call if you have any questions.
End