The International Cessna^® 170 Association

I have a 51 170 A and have recently had some brake problems. Beware!!
The other day while pushing the plane back into parking the right brake locked up. I checked inside of the cabin and found the parking brake had been set on the right brake. I did not set it. It must have happened when I used a lot of right brake to turn the plane around before hand pushing it back. Last night I did a night cross country from South Naknek to Dillingham. After landing in Dillingham and stopping I taxied back onto the runway. I used right brake to straighten it out on the centerline and the brake stuck again. I ended up going all of the way around, slowly, and was able to get the brake to release. Just a word of advice, use extreme caution. I believe that the parking brake is the cause, coupled with partial failure of the lower master cylinder mount as the reason it is so hard to release the brake and why it comes on when I use them. My A+P said he had fixed a problem at the annual, in November, however it dosen't seem fixed to me. If anyone else has had a similar problem please let me know! Take care and fly safe.

Easy fix,huh?--disconnect the parking brake cables. George mentioned this on another topic just recently. I have heard of parking brakes being activated by full rudder deflection in-flight,with subsequent groundloop-type action upon landing. Removal of parking brake mechanism on the tops of the master cylinders is also recommended.

Eric

Eric's right, ditch the parking brake. It's rare to see one connected in AK.

- paul, 1364D

The advice I gave earlier which Eric referred to was posted Nov. 9, 2002.
"I'll remind everyone again ... to totally disconnect and remove the parking brake hardware from the master cylinders. There are many stories of 170's (and others) departing the runway in ground loops from an inadvertently set/locked parking brake in a crosswind. The locking mechanism interferes with the firewall pad and gets set when full rudder is applied momentarily. (The pad lifts the locking lever on the master cylinder locking that wheel brake.) Then at touch-down things turn real nasty."

A simple way to disable this cleanly is, after all the parking brake hardware is removed from the master cyls and firewall,...bend the inner wire over the end of the sheathing of the parking brake Bowden cable, and stow it away in a safe corner with a tie wrap. This will prevent anyone from being able to actuate that pull-knob believing they've got parking brakes available (shoud someone in the future unknowingly try to rely on the parking brake.) Officially, the knob should be placarded "INOP" as well.

Thanks for the help guys, I will be disconecting the parking brake mechanism right away!