new to me maule questions

[yanknbank]

Hi all! I just traded up and sold my 135 pacer for a big gamble on an m5-210c with 750hrs and original motor. Has good compression, and for 2022, it was a good price despite the gamble (I think). Non var crank, so hopefully I can milk a few hundred hours out of it before having to buy a factory motor. I have many questions for you all but I won't do it all in one post.

Its in annual currently, but we're starting another this month. It's tough to start whole it's cold. Really tough.. but runs very nice once started. So I'm putting a surefly mag and sending the other out for Iran. I'm replacing all hoses and baffling.

My first questions

1. It needs shoulder harnesses. I'm leaning towards 3 point from maule. Does anyone have 4 point that fits well and is comfortable? I'm concerned with attaching anything on a carry through spar, and with it interfering with cables. Also, if I do 3 point, is the threaded stud difficult to get welded in with the headliner still installed?

2. My maile tailwheele seems to me unlocking prematurely. I need to get home and really look at how it works, as I'm familiar with Scott, but on full pedal, or near it, deflection, it will just start to free caster without any load applied to it. It's a little tough to get to lock again. The picture is looking up at the mechanism. I see the little Tang that I think is supposed to cam along the side of the assembly when I'm turning in order to unlock, but it looks like the tang is not fully engaged (perhaps the wheel is unlocked in the photo). Should this be up against the side of the assembly when it's locked?

[gbarrier]

With a pair of properly maintained mags it should start quite well but they don't last forever. Send them out every 500 hours and they will be good to you.

[Andy Young]

There is at least one extremely knowledgeable and experienced person on here who would, I believe, tell you that a properly set-up and serviced Maule tailwheel will work perfectly.

Personally, I prefer the Scott tailwheel. If this plane were mine, I’d just buy a Scott and be done with it. As you are already familiar with Scotts, this might also make sense for you.

[yanknbank]

That's a possibility, however, given the gamble on this planes motor, I may have to spend some considerable money in the not too distant future. I'd like to save the expensive and unnecessary mods for another time.

I just simply don't know how these work. Are they designed to free castor at a certain rudder deflection? Or do they still require a force to unlock them like a Scott?

[Andy Young]

I’m afraid I can’t help with that. I’ve never actually worked on a Maule-brand tailwheel. Mine had one when I bought it, but I swapped it out before I flew it home. All of the customer Maules I work on have Scotts.

[andy]

Jeremy is your best bet on a Maule tailwheel. He knows a lot about them. Not sure if he's on the forum these days.

I get your hesitation on swapping for a Scott (ABI) but if you plan to fly the airplane a lot, the Scott tailwheels are much more stable and less prone to shimmying. I had a Maule tailwheel on my MX-7-180 for 10 years before switching to an ABI 3224A with the larger ABI leaf spring. It made a world of difference in landing stability. I constantly had to deal with shimmy, losing the hubcap and circlip and the pain of reinstalling the hubcap correctly when I had the Maule tailwheel. If I landed with a heavy load on a paved runway, it shimmied so badly that it wore most of the tread off the tire. The 3224A solved all those problems and gave me a better way to move the airplane on the ground with a Bogie Bar when away from my home airport. I can't prove it mathematically but I'd be willing to bet that the 3224A is stronger than the Maule tailwheel on very rough airstrips because of the double fork that attaches to the axle instead of a single arm. I'm glad that I had the 3224A when I landed in the Idaho back country airstrips in 2016. Some of them might have bent or broken the Maule tailwheel arm.

[rev412]

I believe the Maule tailwheel is designed to castor freely once it reaches a certain deflection. I used to think otherwise, that it was a certain force that broke it free, and was most puzzled by how mine was working. Then I got a good look at the mechanism one day as I was working with my IA to rebuild it. Ah, so that's why it does that.