One of the really nifty things I enjoy as a Cub owner is other Cub owners, particularly Cub owners who know how to do stuff and don’t mind teaching me how to do the little maintenance things that keep my airplane in the air. I’ve been doofus-ing around for over a month about how my brakes were going kerflooey (note the pilot talk here) and inherited a set of master cylinder diaphragms from Grizzly Stan across the mountains to fix them, but hadn’t mustered up the courage to tackle the job on my own. I looked, talked to several Cub guys about it, thought I’d have to fabricate some inspection/maintenance ports on the underside of the fuselage, when Stan offered to fly over and help me (by doing the work) get back in the air.
Stan Dove right in. One of the telephone advisors suggested just taking the master cylinder apart in situ but I thought that would entail a lot of bending that I just don’t do anymore. I wanted to take the master cylinder out of the airplane (therefore the idea about cutting new inspection/maintenance panels in the belly) but Stan took one look and said we could pull them out without having to go to too much trouble so that’s what we did. I have to write this about Stan: He’s an optimist. And it proved true; the master cylinders were easy to remove. I think I could do it again provided I had someone there to roll under the belly of the airplane and hold my nuts … wait a minute – did that come out right?
The master cylinder is really simple. The assembly is divided by a diaphragm – on the dry side, the brake pedal pushes on a plunger that pushes against the diaphragm – on the other (wet) side is the brake fluid that squirts through tubing into the old-fashioned expansion brakes and causes the Piper Cub to careen somewhat less dramatically down the runway (or almost holds the airplane in place while doing a magneto check before takeoff). I exaggerate – the old brakes work pretty well as long as the diaphragm is in one piece. When they split, diaphragms don’t keep the wet and dry sides separate and you know what happens then … unintended consequences. Above, the split in the diaphragm and the reinstalled product, ready to fly.
This is Stan – happy that the job is over and ready for a taco salad.
The next thing is for me to fly over to his side of the mountains and from there to who knows where?
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