Putting more bend in the tailwheel spring

[jaredyates]

Has anyone come up with a good way to add a little more bend to the leaf springs? The best that I can think of is to press each leaf between a set of dies. The female die would be two pieces of heavy steel pipe with the axes running parallel to each other and to the radius of the bend, spaced apart by some sort of steel bracket. Then the male die would just be another piece of the same pipe. I haven't had any luck finding the businesses that do this sort of thing in my area.

[X'N]

Is the spring too weak or do you want the tail to sit higher? If sitting higher is what your looking for I wonder if you could use some leveling shims to accomplish the same thing? http://www.mcmaster.com/#leveling-shims/=r4tig9

[Collin Campbell]

Jared, I think you are on to a good way to do it. The male/female die thing doesn't need to be too elaborate. I showed up at Oshkosh with my tailspring shimmed up to get the proper tailwheel geometry, and Bob spotted this right away. He told me to put the springs (one at a time) in a hydraulic press and bend them to what I needed. So that is what I did, nothing fancy, just support each end of the spring and press down on the middle. I used a round piece of pipe under the ram to keep from scratching it up. I used a 20 ton press, more than enough.

Collin Campbell
Bolivar, MO

[Battson]

Are these the Bearhawk Tailwheels LLC springs? I found mine to be a little high to start with, but they have settled to pretty much exactly the right geometry. Could be fractionally lower if anything.

I guess having less weight on the nose is the difference? IO-540 vs O-360

[N942VT]

Did the same as Colin Jared, works well. Draw an outline of the spring as a pattern before you press it and compare it to after, it doesn't take much to make a difference. I think I moved the long end a heavy inch or so on the pattern and I wouldn't want to go any more. It put the tail wheel geometry back to where it should be.
Dave

[jaredyates]

Thanks everyone! My springs came from Mark as far as I know. In the longer term I'm looking into trying a tapered rod setup like those on the other designs.

[Battson]

I would love to know how you get on with that....
There are lots of advantages, a "stinger" rod can flex and twist where a spring doesn't, also they look to be much lower drag.
I guess the main disadvantage is their durability and possibly weight?