Pietenpol-List: Tail Wires
Posted: Thu May 30, 2002 6:56 am
Original Posted By: "Mark"
Pieters,I keep hearing the word "shackles" in your messages, and the last time Ichecked the cost of them was a little more than gold bars. May I make asuggestion?If you go to your friendly farm equipment dealer, you will find that hehas various sizes of drive chain (#50, #60, odd links etc. in stock). Get a short chunk of chain, usually costing less than $3.00 per foot andtake off the outside links. Then go see the Mr. Aircraft Spruce catalogand look up clevis pins. If you use two clevis pins thru the holes intwo links of chain - Presto! you now have a substitute for a clevis atjust a fraction of the cost. Don't worry about strength, one guy saidthat his test fixture broke at 2500 lbs using this set up.If you are lucky and the farm equipment man is in a good mood, then hemight separate the outside links for you with his magic chain splitter,otherwise you will have to grind off the heads of the pins and punchthem out.In my opinion, the installation looks neater than using the FAA approvedshackles and you can dazzle your friends with telling them how thrifty(cheap) you are!John Dilatush, NX114D Trying to figure out how to get all the parts ofthe plane out to the airport without damage.________________________________________________________________________________
Pieters,I keep hearing the word "shackles" in your messages, and the last time Ichecked the cost of them was a little more than gold bars. May I make asuggestion?If you go to your friendly farm equipment dealer, you will find that hehas various sizes of drive chain (#50, #60, odd links etc. in stock). Get a short chunk of chain, usually costing less than $3.00 per foot andtake off the outside links. Then go see the Mr. Aircraft Spruce catalogand look up clevis pins. If you use two clevis pins thru the holes intwo links of chain - Presto! you now have a substitute for a clevis atjust a fraction of the cost. Don't worry about strength, one guy saidthat his test fixture broke at 2500 lbs using this set up.If you are lucky and the farm equipment man is in a good mood, then hemight separate the outside links for you with his magic chain splitter,otherwise you will have to grind off the heads of the pins and punchthem out.In my opinion, the installation looks neater than using the FAA approvedshackles and you can dazzle your friends with telling them how thrifty(cheap) you are!John Dilatush, NX114D Trying to figure out how to get all the parts ofthe plane out to the airport without damage.________________________________________________________________________________