Wheel balancing

·         Max Saunders

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Happily flying my J160 ZK-CLX s/n 022 with 650 hours up.

There is a bit of wheel vibration on liftoff. A touch of brake stops it immediately so it seems one or both main wheels could do with balancing.
All rubbers on the legs are new and bolts tightened to spec.

What is a good way of balancing them? I could take them to a local tire shop but using the auto lead rim weights on an aircraft wheel seems unsafe to me.

Max

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·         Doug Smith

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G'day Max,
Wheel vibration on lift-off can be caused by wheel balance - which is best fixed by applying glue-on car weights as you suggested. Just today I noticed quite a large bundle of those lead weights on the nose wheel of a 10-seat turbine aircraft at the local airport so, done right, the weights will certainly stay attached. You will need to position them on the inner face of the rim so that centrifugal force holds them on and surface prep will also be important to the bond strength - it depends on which rims you have but assuming it's a cast unit I would give it a light scuff with some 120 grit paper then wipe clean with Acetone. I've seen 5-minute Araldite work well for that job. Static balancing is normally all that's needed.

If you're running any stop-leak type fluid in the wheels it will often clump and throw the balance off too - wheels with that stuff installed can be impossible to balance.

On the main wheels there is also a tendency for the wheels to skip a little as they come off the runway. This is a function of the geometry of the undercarriage legs and is worse on grooved runway surfaces. It can be addressed to an extent by adjusting the wheel camber and toe-in (per Section 5.19 of the airframe technical manual JTM001-6) but it will ultimately become a game of diminishing returns.

All the best,
Doug.

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·         Max Saunders

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Thanks Doug, I plan to attend to this in the way you suggest at the time of the next annual later this year.

Cheers

Max