New FAA program: Vintage Aircraft Replacement and Modification Article (VARMA)

[Pinecone]

And there is someone working on a carbon fiber replacement skin.

[cliffy]

Its all in the certification costs vs how big the market is.

No one is going to invest that amount of money and accept that amount of liability

just to be nice to the old Bo owners. 

[A64Pilot]

21 hours ago, vorlon1 said:

It's my understanding that Textron is again producing some...

They are, and it’s my understanding that they are very expensive, not from price gouging, but the material isn’t available in the correct thickness and the skins have to be milled down which would seem to be a very tedious process.

It’s the lack of material in the necessary thickness that has kept them from being produced before

[A64Pilot]

9 hours ago, Pinecone said:

And there is someone working on a carbon fiber replacement skin.

That will likely be difficult, the issue with simply putting on aluminum is apparently stiffness, get the stiffness needed and your too heavy, so someone is going to have to do quite a bit of analysis I believe to duplicate magnesium’s properties, then there is the small fact that carbon fiber and aluminum make an excellent battery cell so the carbon will have to be completely electrically isolated from the aluminum I believe, which may make riveting interesting.

Not saying it can’t be done just think it will be hard and if Textron will sell new magnesium skins, can you make money with CF ones?

I’d suspect to do CF right your talking about a new tail not just skins.

Lear back in the day before they went under had planned on composite skins for the Lear Fan I believe. Way I understand it nobody had built a Certified composite aircraft then and Lear had planned to, but the FAA kept changing the rules as they had no idea what they were doing, Lear kept removing composite until just skins were left but by then they were broke.

I’ve also heard the combining gearbox was the reason, but there are too many twin engine helicopters for me to believe that.

[Mooneydreamr]

I just hope that this announcement, no matter how long ago it was made, means I'll be able to buy landing gear pucks for considerably less than $425 each?

[ArtVandelay]

I just hope that this announcement, no matter how long ago it was made, means I'll be able to buy landing gear pucks for considerably less than $425 each?

$266 at spruce , let’s not get carried away.

[vorlon1]

6 hours ago, ArtVandelay said:

$266 at spruce , let’s not get carried away.

@$266, it's too late...

[1980Mooney]

13 hours ago, Mooneydreamr said:

I just hope that this announcement, no matter how long ago it was made, means I'll be able to buy landing gear pucks for considerably less than $425 each?

Oh you mean these cheap $80 pucks made in South Africa?!..... 

Go for it!...Be the first and let us all know how well it goes.

https://avunlimited.co/product/mooney-landing-gear-shock-disk/

[Hank]

1 hour ago, 1980Mooney said:

Oh you mean these cheap $80 pucks made in South Africa?!..... 

Go for it!...Be the first and let us all know how well it goes.

https://avunlimited.co/product/mooney-landing-gear-shock-disk/

I replaced my pucks not that long ago for $105 each. Why are the now DOWN to 2½ times as much???

[Shadrach]

I bought Discs from a Lord distributor in 2021 for $97 a piece plus $35 for shipping.    Prices were all over the place then. I think spruce wanted $165.
I’m shocked (no pun intended) at the prices I’m seeing in this thread.

[Fly Boomer]

On 4/12/2023 at 7:27 PM, MikeOH said:

Oh, I'll bet they are quite reasonably priced, too!

What's the old saying?  "They may not be the best parts, but I guarantee they are the most expensive".