Upgrading Grove Brakes- 7 SS

[amerkarim]

Hi All,

I have just built a 7 SS and I find that I am now flying in and out of very short sandy strips. I have the Grove brake kit 65-211 that came as standard from Kitfox, and I have bled the brakes and worn the pads in with about 10 hours of circuits at my local airstrip. Despite this, I find that the braking is not as sharp and effective as I would like it to be despite hard braking and pressure on the pedals. My pedals are firm on braking and the brakes get hot and make noise, but it still wont slow down fast enough. There is no skidding either. My brakes are strong enough to hold the plane on full throttle run ups, so they must be working. I think I just need extra braking force on landing.

I would like to upgrade the brakes to the Grove 66-152 series that have bigger callipers and discs and more braking force. I presume I can leave the master cylinders and piping the same and that I would just need to change my axles from 1.25" to the 1.5" ones made by Grove, and then swap over the tyres to the new wheels and do the fitting?

Is this a straightforward job and does anyone have any experience with changing their axles from 1.25" to 1.5" ?

Is there anything else I can do to make my braking sharper and more effective ?

Thanks in advance for your replies

Amer

[Dave S]

Amer,

Might not be a bad idea to contact Kitfox...... other Kitfoxes out there work perfectly well with the factory designed brakes. On the outside chance there is something else wrong, it might be a lot more expedient to find and fix that rather than do an upgrade. The factory knows the mechanics of the plane very well.

If you have other changes you have made to the plane; like tires, etc, sharing that specific information might help folks in responding appropriately.
Sincerely,

[amerkarim]

Many thanks for your reply and advice Dave,

I have had a few kitfox owners and airplane engineers look at my brakes locally and they all seems to be fine and working. No baking or tyre mods. Standard Kit brakes and tyres.

We have 2 other Kitfoxes in our group of friends, a Model 5 and a 7 with similar brakes, and on testing, they all brake about the same.

My friends who have flown kitfoxes in this region for over 10 years and 5000+ hours all say that on the short strips, you have to put your full weight onto the brakes and perform a sort of cadence style braking procedure, pumping the brakes, to slow down faster. They have flown my plane and say that my brakes are fine and that I just need to get used to it and learn the technique of pumping the brakes while maintaining pressure to slow down in a hurry.

I am a fairly new pilot and am also new to the Kitfox 7 SS and although I trust my friends judgement, I have seen many smashes in the bush where airplanes cannot stop in time no these short strips, and run out of room, or end up in a series of wheels down missed approaches before aborting a landing completely.

All kit planes are built at economical specifications to save on price but to also provide value to the buyers. If there is the option to upgrade the standard Kitfox Grove kit wheels and brakes with factory made alternative Grove wheels and brakes that provide twice the breaking power for the same effort, then for me it is a no brainer, and a huge weight off my mind with regard to safety.

The challenge for me is the axles. The Kitfox 7 SS has 1.25" axles and the uprated brakes need 1.5" axles. The mounting hardware looks the same so I had thought about changing the axles and wheels and brakes, provided that everything fits without major drilling and welding mods.

I will email Grove on the subject, but I had wondered if anyone else had performed this upgrade themselves and what did they learn from it?

Many thanks again

Kindest regards

Amer

[jdmcbean]

Amer, we can help... there is a larger dual piston caliper that will work with you existing wheels and brakes...

[amerkarim]

Dear John,

That is great news.

Please can you send the details to my email, and we can then work it out.

Many thanks

Kindest regards

Amer