Good Day All,

It seems that I continue to have to service the shimmy damper on the '73 Cessna 182P. Adding only a few drops of fluid puts it back into perferct working order again. I have to do this every 20-30 hours of operation, so about the same number of landing/take off cycles.

Anyone have any experience with the Lord Shimmy Damper product? Worth the money? Looks to be about $1500 for the 182.

Any comments would be appreciated.


Cheers


Macdon221

I don't know how hard it is to service, but you can buy a can of fluid for a lot less than $1500.
If it works well other than having a very slow leak, I'd spend the money elsewhere. But that's me.
I'd certainly look into rebuilding the existing damper before spending that kind of money to replace it.

Do you feel comfortable rebuilding your existing damper?

Years ago when the lord damper first came out I was working for RedTail.
We had a 172 that was used for Charter and scenic flights along with instruction and rental out of Moab.
No matter what we tried the nosewheel would shimmy. Rebuild original damper, re bush steering components, scissor links etc. Replace tire and tube, balance nosewheel, replace steering damper with one from another plane that didn't shimmy... then it would shimmy on this particular 172.

Finally bought a lord damper. I think it was about $400 at the time. Worked like a champ. The fluid or jelly or whatever is inside is way thicker than H5606 fluid.

A brand new cessna damper I think was alot more $$$.

I don't know if the Lord is still on the plane or not but would suspect it is.

I also suspect that if the original cessna had thicker oil it would have also cured the problem, although we never tried it.

When my airplane started the Cessna shimmy about 10 years ago, I immediately thought "shimmy damper" and asked my IA about it. I don't recall what the Lord cost back then, but it wasn't $1500 albeit pretty pricey. His response was, "It's probably not the shimmy damper." He proceeded to pull the scissors link apart, put in new shims, snug things back up, and voila! Shimmy gone! 700 hours later, still no shimmy. I think he charged me half an hour time while I watched and maybe $5 for parts.

Cary

I have been down the road with that too, on my 172, one thing that is most overlook when rebuilding the knee action is the clearance or should I say lack of clearance that is needed on the turning collar, it must be shimmed till snug. if there is any wobble on the turning collar the front wheel will shimmy almost no matter what you do with the damper, I found that my newly installed turning collar (from previous owner) had a thick coat of paint from the factory and was lose, I set it up in a mill and removed just the paint from both sides where the thrust washers contact it, then shimmed it till it had some drag , thus eliminating all wobble. The damper is not hard to rebuild, I found that I had two styles of damper on hand, although they appeared to be identical, one had a second plug/guide behind the first, one must remove the first retainer clip and apply a little air to the open shaft end to pop it out, exposing the inner guide and retainer. Note all paint in the id by the retaining clip must be removed or you will never get it apart. The ware point seems to be the internal plunger, mine was worn .009" out of round, the bore had very little ware, in any case, mine works fine. I did notice that the front wheel had more of a tendency to shimmy with the wheel pants on it. One more thing, My IA turned me on to a Quad seal for the strut, the Quad seal will not roll out like the round O ring. Very smooth!

I would absolutely try a rebuild first. New seals and check the internals for excessive wear. And always go back together with Granville Strut seal in the fluid.

https://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/ ... utseal.php

Do the Lord if nothing else works.