No fault of design but a secondary effect of excess lubrication smearing means that the bungees have got a little moist EVEN though they are wrapped in nice leather boots

The net effect was that a bungee slipped over a bobbin and let the leg go slack .. well as far as the bolt stop point..

I created a temporary splint as I didn’t trust leaving the aircraft on a jack and axle stand EVEN with a ratchet strap between the two wheels

This will be really handy in future maintenance

Paperwork all done and signed by inspector

Whilst lying under the tail end a few weeks ago .. cleaning and drying the bottom I noticed that there was a small scrape on the Oratex material that doubles over the metal joints.

it turns out that prolonged full left rudder turns over the 3 years plus has caused the cable .. that splices off the rudder cable to give left and right control on the spring governed tailwheel … has rubbed against the lower material covering.

An easy fix .. will cut a pinked patch of leather .. really degrease the tail end and stick it on the overlap joint

Well …. what do you get when you mix rubber and oil … there may be a few answers but probably an underlying theme will be nice lubrication !

Its not so nice when it comes together at an area where you probably don’t wish to have quite so much lube and slip …

3 smoke flights in and I was on my 7th or 8th landing post the addition of the smoke system … and I realised I was getting some of the excess oil over the tailwheel .. I made a small leather boot but it was already pretty moist.

On the 8th landing I got quite a bit of wheel shimmy at the end of the roll out …. on parking up i wondered if it was a bearing … but on investigation proved to be an interesting small problem….

The oil had wet the tailwheel bungee rubber and then the ‘loop around’ had slipped up the tailwheel shaft and popped onto the (smaller diameter) main shaft. This had the effect of slacking the support .. hence allowing the natural resistance of the bungee – Now gone – to let the wheel have more free movement.

Easy fix .. clean it all down and remove the oil and then cable tie the bungee top and bottom loop together