brake failure

I had a left brake failure on landing today. No problem, but it did make the taxi back to the hangar interesting. I was told airplanes like cirrus or grumman with the castoring nose wheel are prone to this, due to more use of the brakes on taxiing and brake fluid leak is top on the list of suspects. Anybody else experience this?

Chris,

Glad it worked out for you. I have about 600 hours in Grumman products and yes the brakes do get more use than on other planes. I have had two brake failures on two different planes. Both were due to leakage and not something that I would say was from “heavy use”. The lines on those planes are prone to corrosion and dissimiliar metal interaction due to design. Not sure they would affect a Cirrus. What would be similar is:

  • Try to develop techniques to minimize brake use in taxi. eg use the rudder to influence direction before going for the brake to steer (that seems less effective for me in the Cirrus than it did in the Grumman), line up slightly pointed right on take off roll and things like that. Don’t let yourself get in trouble or behind the plane.

  • Recognize pad wear is higher than you are used to. Inspect them often.

Any diagnosis yet on why they failed? That would be interesting to all of use, so we can keep an eye on them.

Roger

N706CD

I had a left brake failure on landing today. No problem, but it did make the taxi back to the hangar interesting. I was told airplanes like cirrus or grumman with the castoring nose wheel are prone to this, due to more use of the brakes on taxiing and brake fluid leak is top on the list of suspects. Anybody else experience this?

Yep, we had a total failure of the right brake system, due to a leaking o-ring on the right brake. The O-ring had essentially disintegrated, for as yet unknown reasons.

Cheers,

Brand