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Secondary Clutch Pulley
30mm double bearing setup
Take our
time,Take our Time and then take some more time was our motto here.
Donna
and I did this with all the T's crossed and all the i's dotted. Funny
thing was I took the ship out to Tulsa, Oklahoma, to John Spurling
and it was off by at least 30 thousandths on the top. We ended up
removing a shim Donna and I had installed and it was perfect. Whether
transporting it or we just flat screwed up trying to be so careful
I'm not sure but it was for a fact off.
This
looks like a pretty easy thing to install with the exception that
it
has to be perfectly aligned
and
you're supposed to install it as far to the right side of the
ship as possible. This latter of the two isn't in the instructions.
RotorWay may have done this on purpose to shift weight toward the passengers side or they may do it to cover up the mistake on the fan drive we're not sure and all I remember is Tom Smith saying is it needed to be to the right as far as possible when we were too far along to back up. Thinking back now we had to install it to the left or we couldn't get the fan drive upper bearing to the bolt holes, maybe if one used a longer belt here it would work better we're not sure. Our plan is to run the ship and if it gives us trouble well fix it then, but for now it is what it is.
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This and several other small things John found are the reason these ships need to be gone over by someone like John Spurling or Homer Bell.
Like looking for 4 leaf clovers these guys see things most people look right over the top of. There are getting to be quite a few of these kinda people running around the states now and my advice to anyone is to use one of them before you attempt powering your ships up.
About the time we were building our ship, reports began coming in from owners that were having shaft breakages.
Prior
to November 99 they came with a two bearing 30 mm setup and after
November 99 ships I'm told they have the new 30 mm spherical bearing
unit. These are the ones that are snapping the most, from the
information I have, so if you have one of these your pushing the odds.
After everyone
started pressuring them for a fix
a few years back RotorWay
built a test Rig.
Its
a kinda simulated RotorWay helicopter setup they built for testing
the secondaries.
After much tado on the subject from owners RotorWay came out with a 35mm spherical bearing setup. It was supposed to be the cure and they thought they had it going on until the one broke in September 2002
On May 2, 2002
Rotorway sent out a bulletin, (A-38) recommending that everyone
change over to the New Style 35mm setup they're offering.
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BUT!
A little
over 4 months later,
on
September 27,
2002,
at 45 hours on a new design 35mm shaft there was a failure, the first one known to the public anyway.
You can check out an engineering report written by Matthew Dock,P.E. on it in the January 2003 addition of RotorHeads Newsletter.
From what I gather RotorWay had an engineering report made which came to the conclusion it was from stress and pointed fingers at the cog belt drive. We know of at least three 30 mm shafts breaking at the RotorWay factory with chain drives and a few more we've heard of, 7 at last count I think.
After
3
trips out
to RotorWay for flight training and seeing how their ships are
maintained there could for sure be problems because they seemed to
have a wait until it breaks attitude from everything I witnessed.
I have
that feeling because in the 3 trips I made to Rotorway for training
the only time they had all 3 helicopters run the entire week was when
I was there for Phase One. At the time I wrote this my personal
uneducated opinion it is the shaft and bearings and not related to
the drive at all. I feel it's a combination of the way the shaft is
heat treated, the bearings being improperly sized and the manner of
installation they use installing the bearings on the shaft. You can
find out more and most likely more accurate information on the
RotorWayFun
MSN Site.
One thing is for sure, until they find a for sure fix we're all between a rock and a hard place. It is said that prior to failure of this shaft the temps will go up on the bearings. More than one person has said they had no temperature rise to warn them at all, it just snapped, so the only defense you have is to carefully monitor the unit and hope it gives you a warning until a for sure fix is found. One thing I noticed at RotorWay when I was out there was that they vacuum out the top of the secondary alot, at least I think that's what they were doing. It may be that the sand out there gets into the bearing via eroding the seal away or perhaps they're keeping the leaking oil from washing the grease out of it,,I've no Idea.
Its getting to be to hard to keep up with this in so many different areas so please see
in the builders help section for the ever on going information.
END
