I have a coupe with Goodyear brakes that have failed and I can't seem to find out what's going on. I hired a mechanic who tried to get them to work but he kept dragging around and never seemed to find the time to track down the problem. He kept dinking around and telling me he would get it back in the air "tomorrow". After waiting for several weeks I was able to get a "real" mechanic to look at the plane. Here is an excerpt of what he wrote in an email:
"I removed the master cylinder which I inspected & re-installed. We tried bleeding the brakes by pumping up & bleeding, like a car, to no avail. No fluid getting to the calipers. We removed the master cylinder again & checked the lines. The line from the reservoir is clear. The lines from the master cylinder to the calipers is clear. The master cylinders seem to be working fine on & off the airplane. We pressure bled from the bottom up, to no avail. We tried to pressure bleed from the top, thru the reservoir, as described in the manual, with no luck. However, we did finally start getting some fluid to the calipers, under pressure, but no braking action. The calipers are working, because I can see them 'flexing'. I didn't remove them since they are a bit of a pain & the previous mechanic had looked at the pads & said they're OK. My past experiences with Goodyear brakes, within the last 10 years at least, is on a Lark Commander, which probably used the same calipers since it had a 6" wheel, & a Cessna 310. both of these aircraft had similar symptoms. That is, the brakes 'pumped up', the calipers would work but there was no braking action at all. As you reported the plane had been getting harder & harder to stop. This was the same scenario with the other 2 airplanes. Even tho the pucks looked acceptable, they weren't. My initial suggestion is to bite the bullet & convert to Cleveland brakes. Another factor in converting the other 2 aircraft to Clevelands were because, at the time, replacement costs for the pads alone were nearly the cost of the Cleveland kit. I haven't worked on any Goodyear equipped aircraft since, but my gut feeling & previous experience is that these Goodyears are shot". I'm to the point where I don't know what to do next and really need all the advice and suggestions you guys can offer? I would prefer not to spend the money to convert to Clevelands and wonder if the fluid problem would continue even with the new brakes. I've only got a month left to get the little lady back in the air to make the trip to Oshkosh.
