[Paul462]

Really! 128 views, no words of enlightenment.

For everyone's info, we talked with Cessna and also CPA's Tom Carr. Cessna's attitude was basically "You want to take the saddles off the shafts to grease the thust bearings?! What do you wanna go do that for? You sure you want to do that?" Cessna offered no method to remove the saddles from the shafts.

Tom Carr says the feedback he gets from the field is that people seem to be dripping straight 50 weight oil into the bearing during annuals without doing any disassembly - grease is too thick to flow in, and apparently some engine oil is better than nothing.

We tried heating the saddles with a heat gun, while simultaneously cooling the shafts with bags of ice - no joy.

We ended up spending probably 35 - 40 man hours unbolting and re-bolting the hydraulic actuator (which required removing the mains, unbolting the universals from the actuator, disconnecting the hydraulic supply lines, and dealing with the Mekano set from hell which held in the actuator in place, featuring several virtually inaccessible nuts and bolts close to the belly of the plane), and ended up dripping in Aeroshell 100, which made the bearings sound less dry. Live and learn! I must say it was easy to check the tire pressures with the mains removed from the plane...

Paul Rooy