Quote:
Originally Posted by FlashDrive
Here's another one ( USA this time ) ....a young aircraft mechanic came up with a brilliant idea of putting ' Vanes ' into the inner side of the landing gear wheels ....with the idea that when the landing gear was deployed, the Vanes would ' catch ' the rushing wind and start to ' spin ' the wheels very fast and landing like this gave the Tyre's a better life span.....better than landing with non rotating ones .
He presented his ' idea ' to the head Engineers and they did a trial run.....after fitting new rubber on 1 Aircraft only , it was flown / touch and go experimenting over a period of many months .
It was found that having the ' Vanes ' installed increased the life span of new tires was near on twice that of standard wheels with no Vanes
The US Military has a vast number of Aircraft ....The tire companies got wind of this and didn't like it at all. So they said if you do this to your Aircraft we will not give you the ' discount ' on the tires we are contracted to make for you.
The tire company saw huge losses and their bottom line would suffer.
So...the ' Vane Installation ' was shelved.
Col.
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Not surprised at all. My dad was a chemical engineer. The factory he was working at was doing well. competitor bought them and closed them down. Some bean counter had worked out that it was more cost effective to shell out the money to get rid of them and recoup cost down the road than trying to compete on prices. Dog eat dog. Always will be about money and interests in the end.