Towbar

A

appleii2

New member
Hi all,

My name is Nelson; I recently acquired N7651B from a longtime member on here. I've been lurking on the forum for a while, reading through the archive of old threads, and finally have something to contribute!

I keep the plane in a corporate hangar at KPVD, and needed to come up with a good solution for moving it around. I wasn't able to find any commercially available products that would work with a tug (and I wasn't wild about the idea of pushing/pulling from the tailwheel anyway), so I decided to make something myself.

The towbar attaches to the holes on the inside of the main gear legs with two pins, and connects to a tug with a standard 3" ring. The pin on one side is fixed, and the other slides and is held in place with a pin to keep it from slipping out of the gear when in use. The thing works great! It seems securely attached and has great authority when turning. I've included a few photos, and would be happy to share the CAD file if anyone else is in a similar situation and wants to make one for themselves.
 
I couldn't attach the autocad file on here, so I uploaded it to google drive:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Rvprjpdw-yBWwzjg4soZQRi7XqMMES7J/view?usp=sharing

I also attached the shop drawing from the fabricator. A couple of notes:

- The shop drawing doesn't exactly match the CAD file. I changed the materials to match what sizes they had in stock so I could get the thing made more quickly, and these replacement materials are shown in the shop drawing. There is slightly more play than there would have been using the materials in the CAD file.
- For the pin size, you can go smaller than the CAD file (like I did when it was made) but you can't go larger
- Once you get the thing made, you'll need to test fit it and mark/drill a hole for the pin to hold the second peg in place on the wheel
- I made this for a 14-19-2. I'm not sure if the gear dimensions are the same on the 14-19. It's probably worth spending time with a tape and some calipers to verify the dimensions for yours.

Hope this is helpful!
 
I will be down at the hangar tomorrow. I will double check all the dimensions. Thanks for the information.

Thanks,
Shawn
 
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