Brake & flap handle wear, plus flap detent angle

[Bryan Cotton]

So a year ago or so, my parking brake wasn't holding. On my sport trainer controls the parking brake is a stop that you pull the lever to, and snap into place. I found that a groove had worn into the brake handle and I wrapped it in stainless.

Here is the other side:

And then life was good. But I noticed I was having the same issue on the flap handle, so I also did a stainless wrap on it. Life was still good.

The last 2-3 flights before we had to pull our engine apart, the flaps were slipping out of the second (full) notch. We could sort of hold it in place from the left seat with a leg, but that's not really great. I tried to file the detent a bit. Almost helped - but I realized the C08-12 detent block was worn. So I made a piece of steel to rivet on:

It is 0.063" thick 4130. I had to paint it of course.

flap stop riveted.png (355.1 KiB) Viewed 737 times

Something to consider for those still building. Those aluminum parts wear!

[Raluttio]

I have the same issue but just on the flap side. Brake handle and detent is perfect still. A month of two ago flaps fully retracted from the second detent at about 25 feet on a short field landing - that wasn't fun. Haven't used full flaps since.

I had two ideas:
1. Double up detents with a 3/4" piece of aluminum.
2. Use some HDPE to protect the bump outs from the aluminum on aluminum friction.

Your steel solution might end up being the winner though - simple to fabricate and attach.