The International Cessna^® 170 Association

You got me on that one, I never took a rigger apart.

Has anyone with the AWB2500 ski's had a problem getting the ski's to move up from the ski down position with the aircraft on the ground?

For some reason my pump from time to time seems to lock solid and won't pump when I try to go wheels down from the over centre position wheels up? If I take a bar for each ski and wedge it between the axle and ski frame and apply pressure forcing the lift arm backwards off over centre I can then get the seized pump to start moving again. Its as if its taking too much pressure to knock the mechanism off over centre so that you can raise the skis back up. This only happens with the entire weight of the airplane on the skis(wheels up, skis down).

Is this normal?

Mark

So it is a problem that is intermittent??? I first plumbed my valve body wrong, but that was evident on the first try . My pump says 3000 psi. I found it interesting the design for the valving made it 'self bleeding' if that makes sense.
John

mdpesky wrote:
Is this normal?

Mark

Yes. Try to pump the wheels down while you are still moving if you can, random motion helps break them over. Otherwise, it is normal to see what you are seeing. I never tried it but I wonder if you could put a larger diameter bushing around the bolt on the wheels-up stop to reduce the over-center force.

Thanks for verifying that Richard, I really appreciate it. Glad to hear I don't have another problem to deal with. I was thinking the same thing regarding increasing the stop diameter but then they probably want them to over center??? I guess I always carry a couple of pry bars with me

It would be a fine balance to maintain some over-center and still be able to break them over more easily. You could try using feeler gauges and experiment with how much it would take.

Thats a good idea, I will try that. Obviously we will never find any type "Federal" spec on same I assume?