jmikesh

My Feedback: (5)

anybody having problems with the funtana 40 or 50 landing gear block failing?

tailskid

My Feedback: (34)

Mine (funtanaX50) failed.....after I stalled it and it went in nose first...split the blocks, not the glue joints! Pilot error 100%!

jrotor

My Feedback: (5)

It failed in my Funtana 40 too, so I changed to nyon bolts and it works great. Nyon bolt just breaks in hard landing so the landing gear block is not damaged.
I think it's 5-32 thread. Make sure u get 1.5 inch or longer so that u can drive out from inside plane when the bolt head broken off.

Zeeb

My Feedback: (41)

There are a few things you should check/do to an ARF. One is to make sure vital areas are re-enforced since oft times the firewalls, landing gear mountings, etc. don't have a lot of strength there.

I don't have the 40, but I do have a 90. I re-enforced the landing gear mounting area, partially because I didn't like the way it was set up and partially because I used a taller, thicker TNT aluminum gear. I did knock the landing gear out of it one day when it hit a rut in the runway on a hot landing (new tx and I was having problems getting things trimmed), but basically it's been a great mod and can take a lot more than the stock gear which tends to bend on some hard landings.

I did quite a bit of research on the nylon vs. steel landing gear bolts. The opinions expressed above are the nylon argument, except no one mentioned that when the gear comes off, the wheel pants will punch holes in the wing covering. Some say take the wheel pants off to prevent this. The steel argument is that you don't want the gear to break off at the bolts and punch holes in the wing, but the down side is that you must repair the fuselage if you do knock it out when using steel bolts.

So pick your poison, but I would suggest beefing up the mounting area no matter which way you decide to go on the mounting bolts...

jmikesh

My Feedback: (5)

3 funtana 40s in our club...all lg blocks failed on not so hard landings!! horizon hobbies doesn't think the gear blocks have had any problems...The problem IS...the blocks don't fail from compression (although I add an additional block to the one there. rather the block PULLS AWAY from the tristock..even with nylon bolts the gear block will weaken...the best mod is to remove some of the covering from the fuse sides (about 1 inch up from lg block) and glue nylon tape over the block and fuse sides...now the gear won't pull away.if it does the plane is probably is totaled.

Chrispeace

This last mod suggestion seems a bit extreme!

To my mind all you need to do is get inside and add a brace support (thin ply sheet) and across the width of the fuselage (under the tank space) and standing vertically so that it sits on the existing UC block and offers support up the sides of the fuslage. It should be trimmed at the corners to match the filler blocks at the bottom and glue it in with warmed epoxy (mix in a plastic container and warm with a hair dryer until runny) swilled around to fill all joints. Then use 3 nylon bolts with no spats. Did this, worked a treat.

Not my idea, found it in a thread months ago on just this subject.

Salty25

My Feedback: (9)

I never heard of making hot epoxy, ok warm.

I did put a piece of ply on the inside of mine after the block failed. I'm using the 1/4-20 nylon bolts now also. I don't have the pants on so they don't poke into the wing when the bolt fails, and it does.

I'm considering redoing it to put the metal screws back in again. Those darn bolts just break too much on this plane. I've done the nylon bolt mod on others and it works great. But for some reason on the funtana the bolts seem to snap after 5 or 6 landings. I don't think it's me, well it maybe but I'm not willing to accept that.

RC-Fanatic

After hearing all of the horror stories about this topic prior to even flying my new Funtan 50X, I decided to beef up the landing gear area with two plywood sections in and around the landing gear and firewall area as the original materials (balsa sheeting) seemed to flimsy (photo#1). I made two plywood plates (photo#2 where major lines on paper equal 1") to fit on the front 45 degree wall below the firewall and the bottom section between this area and the actual existing piece that the landing gear is bolted into. After adding these, I was contemplating putting a third plywood plate over the the whole bottom section now that it was level, but at 2:30 AM I was a bit tired.

My heart was racing when I sent the plane down the grass strip at 30-40% throttle (OS50FX and Bison Pitts Muffler sounded great) for its maiden voyage today. As she began to climb and I banked right over a plowed over corn field, the engine quite when I was about 30 feet off the ground and I had to dead stick land the thing in some rough terrain.

To make a long story short, the landing gear broke off (photo#3). The wings of the plane as well as the rest of it were in tact as I did remember to take the wheel pants off to prevent them from going through the wing.

It looks like the pieces that I put in were in tact although the bottom section did start to separate from the fuselage walls itself. What seemed very interesting was that the original balsa that the landing gear was bolted into split in half as the gear rotated away from the fuselage(photo#4). Also interesting was that this piece of wood was not plywood. The extra plywood piece covering the entire bottom section that I did not add probably would have prevented this or better yet a few taller ribs running from front to back to stop the rotation of the gear..

I have to find out why the engine stalled (it ran fine on the test stand for the 4-5 break in tanks). Since I was flying by myself, I was not able to run the engine up while holding it horizontal and moving it to a vertical position.

Although the terrain was a bit rough, I think that gear should have held. Does anyone have any sure fire ways to fix the landing gear so it can withstand landings?

Thanks for all of your help!