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Fredrik S
Staff Sergeant
Gender: Male
Location: Jönköping, Sweden
Registered: Sep 2014
Status: Offline
Posts: 49
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 Posted Sunday, May 6, 2018 @ 05:40 PM
Hi all.
Long time no hear i should say.
I haven't logged on to the forum for quite a while since we repaired XSK after the wheel up landing for different reasons. Main one is that i became a father in april 2017 so i have had my hands full with my daughter and to get time to get in the air.
Also there has been a couple of changes of ownership on XSK so we have one new owner and i myself have bought my fathers share in the plane so i'm now one of the four owners for real.
Unfortunately i got word from one of the other owners who flew her earlier this evening about a quite serious problem with our lady, during his last landing out of 3 he noticed that she didn't roll straight during after landing roll-out. So he stopped, got out and checked the gear and wheels and saw the same thing as the picture shows.
Fortunately he had done 3 very smooth landings otherwise i'm afraid we would have been looking at another time-consuming rebuild/check of the engine and a new prop again. As far as i am concernd i suspect metal fatigue /a growing crack that has been growing during the years and that he had bad luck being the one flying at the same point that the fatigue really cracked.
Now for my question, do anyone here knows about anywhere where we can get hold of new or used parts for our main landing gear? This seems to be die-cast aluminium so i'm guessing that the part will be far from easy to find.
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Best regards
/Fredrik Svanberg
RF4D serial#4104 SE-XSK
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Bob Grimstead
Captain
Gender: Male
Location: Perth, Western Australia or West Sussex, England
Registered: Dec 2006
Status: Offline
Posts: 2039
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Posted Sunday, May 6, 2018 @ 07:53 PM
Hi Fredrik, welcome back,
Congratulations on your daughter. We have several regular young lady visitors to this forum, including Collin's and Jorgen's daughters. Unfortunately, mine is not so interested, having recently had a baby herself.
I am really sorry to hear about your cracked main wheel casting.
This is the second most common problem with RF3s & 4s (the most common being landing with the wheel up).
Regrettably I can't find the relevant thread with our search facility, but I believe that Patrick Faucheron has been able to get batches of them made occasionally, although I have no idea whether he has kept any in stock.
if you search the forum for 'cracked', 'main gear', 'fork' etc, you should at least be able to see some castings illustrated that have been welded, which might be your alternative option.
Of course, nowadays it it possible to get the casting 3D laser scanned and CNC duplicated — maybe even Additive Manufactured (3D printed).
Good luck, Bob
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Flying and displaying Fournier RF4Ds VH-HDO and G-AWGN, building replica RF6B G-RFGB and custodian of RF6B prototype F-BPXV
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Fredrik S
Staff Sergeant
Gender: Male
Location: Jönköping, Sweden
Registered: Sep 2014
Status: Offline
Posts: 49
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Posted Tuesday, May 8, 2018 @ 03:03 AM
Hi Bob.
Thanks for your quick response as usual  and for the greeting, i'm hoping that my daughter will make a similar journey like me and take after her father and end up being one owner of XSK sp that it stays within the family as it has this far  . But it is a bit early to tell yet  .
I spend a fair bit of time last night trying to find a thread that deals with this on the forum using search terms as cracked, fork, main gear, landing gear etc. without any luck.
Do you have any contact information to Patrick so i might get in touch with him and ask if he has any forks in stock?
As far as i know at the moment, if the main fork is made out of Die-cast aluminium, welding won't be possible. If its machined out of a single piece of aluminium block however it would be possible to weld it.
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Best regards
/Fredrik Svanberg
RF4D serial#4104 SE-XSK
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Fredrik S
Staff Sergeant
Gender: Male
Location: Jönköping, Sweden
Registered: Sep 2014
Status: Offline
Posts: 49
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Posted Tuesday, May 8, 2018 @ 05:07 AM
Quick update.
I managed to scour the german CFI site and got hold of Patricks emailadress. And luckily he had one fork left in stock so we bought it directly and hopefully we will have it in our hands early next week.
Thank you so much for the tip Bob!
The cost was lower than expected as well so it was all bonuses, no reason to buy a lottery ticket since i feel i have used up all my luck for today 
Seems like Patrick and his friends has updated the design and recalculated it with a FEM program so hopefully it will last longer than XSK will be able to fly
This is why i love this forum, everybody is helping each other with tips, experience and knowledge so that we can keep our fine little machines flying for many more years to come.
[Edit by Fredrik S on Tuesday, May 8, 2018 @ 05:09 AM]
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Best regards
/Fredrik Svanberg
RF4D serial#4104 SE-XSK
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Bob Grimstead
Captain
Gender: Male
Location: Perth, Western Australia or West Sussex, England
Registered: Dec 2006
Status: Offline
Posts: 2039
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Posted Tuesday, May 8, 2018 @ 05:13 AM
Tap on 'members' — top right — and send Patrick an email or a private message (or both).
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Flying and displaying Fournier RF4Ds VH-HDO and G-AWGN, building replica RF6B G-RFGB and custodian of RF6B prototype F-BPXV
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Bob Grimstead
Captain
Gender: Male
Location: Perth, Western Australia or West Sussex, England
Registered: Dec 2006
Status: Offline
Posts: 2039
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Posted Tuesday, May 8, 2018 @ 05:16 AM
Patrick runs the German CFI group.
With a very quick search I have found this thread on his newsletter.
The photos are self-explanatory but you will need to google translate for the text.
http://www.club-fournier.de/dev/category/technik/fahrwerk/
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Flying and displaying Fournier RF4Ds VH-HDO and G-AWGN, building replica RF6B G-RFGB and custodian of RF6B prototype F-BPXV
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Fredrik S
Staff Sergeant
Gender: Male
Location: Jönköping, Sweden
Registered: Sep 2014
Status: Offline
Posts: 49
|
Posted Wednesday, May 9, 2018 @ 07:48 AM
Hi Bob.
We obviously wrote each other at about the same time. so i guess you might not have seen my last post before you wrote your answers .
Again thanks for all the help .
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Best regards
/Fredrik Svanberg
RF4D serial#4104 SE-XSK
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Bob Grimstead
Captain
Gender: Male
Location: Perth, Western Australia or West Sussex, England
Registered: Dec 2006
Status: Offline
Posts: 2039
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Posted Wednesday, May 9, 2018 @ 09:08 AM
Oh, that's great news Fredrik, Well done. Like everybody on this forum, I'm always happy to help a fellow Fournicator
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Flying and displaying Fournier RF4Ds VH-HDO and G-AWGN, building replica RF6B G-RFGB and custodian of RF6B prototype F-BPXV
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Fredrik S
Staff Sergeant
Gender: Male
Location: Jönköping, Sweden
Registered: Sep 2014
Status: Offline
Posts: 49
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Posted Wednesday, May 16, 2018 @ 02:56 AM
Thanks Bob.
Patrick offered us to buy the second "little" fork as well (The one that the wheel bolts on to) and we decided to buy that one as well.
It's not an updated design but it is reinforced at the spots where it can hit the main fork (5mm thicker material) so we won't be changing the gear until we have that piece as well since we thought we would have a completeley new gear and save our undamaged "little" original fork as a spare instead.
After changing the gear all that is left will be doing a new weighing of the old girl to see what has happened with all the new parts and during the soon to be 30 years she has been flying.
(Last weighing was done when the rebuild was completed in 1991 ) so we are a bit curious as to what has changed since then. There has been a lot of components changed since then. Especially these last few years with the wheel up landing, and now with the gear.
[Edit by Fredrik S on Wednesday, May 16, 2018 @ 02:56 AM]
[Edit by Fredrik S on Wednesday, May 16, 2018 @ 02:57 AM]
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Best regards
/Fredrik Svanberg
RF4D serial#4104 SE-XSK
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Bob Grimstead
Captain
Gender: Male
Location: Perth, Western Australia or West Sussex, England
Registered: Dec 2006
Status: Offline
Posts: 2039
|
Posted Wednesday, May 16, 2018 @ 05:39 AM
Thanks for the update Frederik,
I do suspect that these castings might become brittle over the years (mine are all fifty years old now).
I also bought one each of these castings, but I'm keeping them in reserve as spares.
Because both my RF4Ds have old castings, I try to keep them clean and i do inspect them throughly for cracks before every flight.
I hope you get your Fournier fully serviceable and back flying again very soon.
All the best, Bob
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Flying and displaying Fournier RF4Ds VH-HDO and G-AWGN, building replica RF6B G-RFGB and custodian of RF6B prototype F-BPXV
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