Fitting in with the MLG postings of late, I decidewd to jack mine up and put in
the spacers to raise my tail today. As I was taking thinga apart, I was
surprised to see there were already a set of spacers there. Strange, my tail
is pretty low.
I decided to measure my donut stack, three and 1/2 inches, although the rubbers
look as good as new. I jacked it up to measure again no load - still three and
a half! What the heck is going on here. I have a pair of bellville spring
equipped struts, measured them, and the stack is about four and a quarter
inches!
I decide to take things apart to see what is going on, drop the bottom bolt,
swing the strut back to pull it off - and it won't move! Now I understand why
the rubbers are compressed - the strut is froze solid in a compressed state!
Take the other side off, same thing.
Easy, just pull the top bolt out - whoops, I think you must have to pull the
wings to do that AND have some special wrenches, not what I wanted. I found I
could put a drift down thru between the wing and center section, and pound on
the top of the strut to try to beat the bottom part off. No luck, gave up for
the day and came home to get a bigger hammer - a LOT BIGGER hammer. I may have
to heat the outside of the strut to release it, probably burn up the rubbers,
and I don't even know for sure WHERE the sticking is!
Has anybody else had this problem? I could sure use an easy solution right now.
No wonder I had such a devil of a time with smooth landings, darned thing had
NO spring action whatever!
