The International Cessna^® 170 Association

I'm changing my tail wheel spring and trying to remove the retainer channel. It's on a 1955. There seems to be no way to get to the back of the two bolts mounted longitudinally unless you remove the tail feathers or add an inspection hole. Any suggestions.
Thanks,
Charlie

Hey Charlie,
What's your serial number? I'm not seeing your delema!
brad

We managed to get the spring out and the replacement in without having to remove the channel. It would have been much easier with the channel removed, but it seems that without making an extra inspection hole or removing the tail feathers you can't get to the back of the two bolts. Now to finish the rest of the list of must do things on the 170!
Charlie

Hi Charlie, I just replaced my tail wheel leaf spring pack. In the process I found the channel had two small cracks located in the notches where the sides of the channel bend up. I was able to remove the channel/bulkhead attach nuts without removing the vertical/horizontal. I used a 1/4 drive wobblie socket and a long extension (18") through the rudder control cable slots. Wrapping tape around the wobblie joint to stiffin up the joint and prepositioning the socket to the proper angle I was able to place the socket on the nuts by feel and then removed them. Reversing the procedure I used some dumdum to hold the nut in the socket and placed the nut against the bulkhead to set the nut perpendicular to the bolt hole then inserted the bolt. Using two people it took 10 minutes to get them off and 30 minutes to get them back on but I was not going to remove the vertical and horizontal.

Good luck!
Larry

Just another thought, If you cannot get the spring pack out with out removing the channel maybe you could just back the nuts off enough to loosen the channel and not take the nuts all the way off. Would save getting the nuts back on the bolts which was the most difficult.

Larry - Thanks for the technique. If we have to go back in there sometime I'll use it. We managed to get everything in and out without removing the channel, but for a while I didn't think it was going to work.
Charlie

Larry's technique works well. I have done that on a couple of differnt 170's.
Shawn

I have changed a couple of those. The last one I did since I'm getting old and fat and don't bend so well any more. I sent my kid into the tail with a long 1/4 drive extension and it worked good.