Bad News from the FAA regarding Landing Gear Actuator (Gear Set)

[Matthew P]

5 minutes ago, PT20J said:

I always thought that Dukes made the original 20:1 gears and Mooney designed the 40:1 retrofit gear set. Does anyone know for certain if this is the case?

 I'm talking to the company that bought out Dukes, still waiting to hear back

[Paul Thomas]

2 hours ago, Shiroyuki said:

I talked to a friend of mine who is a design approve representative for TC here in canada.

he says it is possible to measure the gear, draw it in 3d cad, then do metal testing to determine the material and manufacturing process, then require approval from transport canada for PDA, which is equal to US PMA. Then the part need to be manufactured by an approved manufacturer. The problem is how much demand there is for these gears. Obviously it cost money for the initial investment, so no one would want to lose money on it.

Schllc stated in another thread that he has gears made for something else in Columbia. The price was reasonable.

I don't buy that these gears have to be expensive... but I do believe that they will be!

[Matthew P]

12 minutes ago, Paul Thomas said:

Schllc stated in another thread that he has gears made for something else in Columbia. The price was reasonable.

I don't buy that these gears have to be expensive... but I do believe that they will be!

If Lasar gets them guaranteed a 900-1000% markup like backsprings

[Shiroyuki]

1 hour ago, Matthew P said:

If Lasar gets them guaranteed a 900-1000% markup like backsprings

That’s ransom… hand us the money or your beloved plane won’t fly..

[MikeOH]

1 hour ago, Shiroyuki said:

That’s ransom… hand us the money or your beloved plane won’t fly..

EXACTLY!

The new owners of LASAR don't have the same sense of 'community' as Paul Lowen, that's for sure.

[Shiroyuki]

3 hours ago, Matthew P said:

I had a set of new gears scanned, measured and have the CAD files as well as the Rockwell Hardness testing of the gears

I'm going to have a more detailed conversation with my friend regarding getting this part PDA'd. We will potentially look into the cost and where to get it made.

I think it is very far fetched as the initial cost is probably going to be significant and I doubt a lot of people will be buying them.

My friend owns a company that issues design approval and modification, so this is mostly within his scope of work.

He did mention in order for them to design this part, they have to get their hand onto a few existing actuator and measure the dimension themself, and come up with a tolerance as well. I'm not an engineer (no where close) so I'm not sure how all these steps are going to work. He says he cannot accept 3d drawing from unknown source... So as the metal testing. But I suppose and existing 3d model and test can be helpful.

[N201MKTurbo]

4 hours ago, PT20J said:

I always thought that Dukes made the original 20:1 gears and Mooney designed the 40:1 retrofit gear set. Does anyone know for certain if this is the case?

I don't know the history. I think the likely scenario is that Mooney was having a lot of gear failures, had a big meeting with Dukes and they all decided to to design a set of 40:1 replacement gears. I would just assume Dukes made the replacement gears. They were the gear guys after all.

[MikeOH]

On 12/27/2024 at 2:28 PM, N201MKTurbo said:

I don't know the history. I think the likely scenario is that Mooney was having a lot of gear failures, had a big meeting with Dukes and they all decided to to design a set of 40:1 replacement gears. I would just assume Dukes made the replacement gears. They were the gear guys after all.

Where are these “lot of gear failures?”  That’s the part of the history I’ve not seen. How many gear ups have actually been caused by the gears failing in a Dukes actuator? You’d think we could point to a few. It is an AD to inspect, after all. Not to mention that 40:1 set does NOT terminate the AD.

[cliffy]

Probably not as many full failures as there are "too worn out to use any more" due to not being disassembled and relubed as required over the years. With as little as they get used time and age have more to do with the grease drying out than anything else.

Its a simple formula.

Cheap annuals = no grease.

No grease- No gears 

No Mooney specific knowledge = no gears

No gears = No fly

Call it price gouging, call it airplane tax, call it all you want, but the end game is the same.

We fly antiques that no one wants to supply critical parts for due to legalities

Why are we surprised when a manufacturer doesn't want to support something more than a half century old anymore? Does Ford still supply parts for a 63 Fairlane? Does Chevy still make exact replacement parts for a 64 Corvette?  Most of our Mooneys are older than those flying them. 

We either cough up the money to do it ourselves OR the airplanes become beer cans (which they will eventually anyway) 

BTW we kill more airplanes by doing stupid stuff in them than get killed by no gears available. 

[MikeOH]

@cliffy

Thanks, that's been my gut feel for this 'issue' all along.  I keep up with the lube/inspect schedule and it's been all good, so far.  Near as I can tell from the absence of any log entries, I have the original gears...54 years old.

[Matthew P]

5 hours ago, cliffy said:

Probably not as many full failures as there are "too worn out to use any more" due to not being disassembled and relubed as required over the years. With as little as they get used time and age have more to do with the grease drying out than anything else.

Its a simple formula.

Cheap annuals = no grease.

No grease- No gears 

No Mooney specific knowledge = no gears

No gears = No fly

Call it price gouging, call it airplane tax, call it all you want, but the end game is the same.

We fly antiques that no one wants to supply critical parts for due to legalities

Why are we surprised when a manufacturer doesn't want to support something more than a half century old anymore? Does Ford still supply parts for a 63 Fairlane? Does Chevy still make exact replacement parts for a 64 Corvette?  Most of our Mooneys are older than those flying them. 

We either cough up the money to do it ourselves OR the airplanes become beer cans (which they will eventually anyway) 

BTW we kill more airplanes by doing stupid stuff in them than get killed by no gears available. 

Well, this is geared towards those not doing stupid stuff, that would like to continue flying without a gearset keeping us from doing so...some of your analogies are apples and oranges, Mooney admits that it's nothing more than a parts business at this point, states that it's there to supports it's customers, their largest base of customers are the ones flying aircraft older than the pilots flying them, part manufacturer waiting for Mooney to decide to run a batch, not asking them to resurrect anything that's not readily available, that the manufactures is ready to do....so Mooney, support your existing customers as you state your current and only remaining charter is, or...continue the slow and painful path to insolvency, like others before you.