Darrel Morisse wrote: > Welcom Ron. Glad you're with us. I still haven't identified my > wheel/brakes yet. Talked to an oldtimer Piper guru who says they didn't > come off a Piper and aren't Cleveland or Scott. Said maybe Bodel which were > put on some of the early homebuilts. They're not the Goodrich tube/expando > units as they're typical "shoe" type of brakes. Woooo, that does sound weird. You might consider giving Pete Bowers a call. He might well know details about some of the more obscure hardware. I'll give my local EAA Tech Counselor a call about "Bodel"...see what he makes of it. > What was suggested is that > I obtain some flexible brake lining material and make my own liners. I > ordered some from Carquest today and will give a report on how it goes. Might work well enough. Worth a shot, anyway. > I asked a few days ago if it's normal for the wing fabric to wrinkle > slightly outboard of the strut attach points, but got no answer. Is this > normal? By "strut attach points," I'm assuming you mean the wire attach points. First, was it wrinkled before you adjusted the rigging, or did it appear after you tweeked the turnbuckles? Second, is it wrinkled all the time, or does only show up in flight (or, conversely, does it show up on the ground and disappear in flight)? The load pattern changes when a plane transitions from ground to flight. Neither N500F nor my current 'Baby shows a wrinkle, but the covering definitely changes between flight and ground. N500F had a bit of "ballooning" around the landing-wire attach points...the reinforcement under the skin appeared to bow up a bit in flight. You could barely make it out on the ground, but the position of the reinforcement was quite obvious in flight. One side was worse than the other. One thing about wrinkles in the fabric...they can appear quite a distance away from where the actual problem is. When a windstorm blew a cabinet down on N500F's wing in 1992, wrinkles appeared by the first rib, up near the forward spar. What had actually happened was that the wingwalk area had pulled free by the aft spar at the root. Wouldn't hurt to pull of some inspection panels and take a quick look inside, just for peace of mind. A small flashlight and a mirror on a stick will let you look for loose braces, etc. Ron Wanttaja