My 175 is really nose heavy. The nose drops right under 60 unless you keep some power on and pull hard! I was reading on some other sites that several Avcon Conversions have about 15 lbs in the tail. One guy said he took an old tail section and poured in molten lead. He used the tie down ring to secure it.

I want to remove the seat and put in some camping stuff. That will help but I don't want to carry water just for the sake of extra weight. Plus I don't want something real heavy behind me if I crash. I would rather have 15 lbs in the tail that 100 lbs or useless stuff just to make it balanced. Any of you guys ever done this and how is the best way to go about it?

Selkirk Extended Baggage covers both your issues. Carry the weight in water (keeps you alive) loaded in the aft-most section of the extension. And carry more stuff-

The pouring of molten lead in the tail is gonna draw jeers from the peanut gallery

I'd rather have 15 pounds of survival food/gear in the very aft portion of my baggage compartment, than have 15 pounds of lead back there.

Yes Selkirk has one for 175's http://www.selkirk-aviation.com/extend_bag.html. It will carry 50 pounds. A few tools, some water bottles etc. Do you have a constant speed prop. That could be part of the problem.

I met a guy from Nebraska with a 175 with 180 HP. He put a tail wheel conversion and somehow got the plane changed to an experimental. He moved the engine 4 inches aft and that really helped with W and B. Helped bunch with the nose heavy issue.

Start with Selkirk first because you can carry more stuff then decide if you need to do more.

Tim

I would love an extended baggage kit but I am having a hard time spending that much for a few pieces of Aluminum!

"SA 59-100M Extended Baggage Kit With Rear Battery - (Specify: "Metal") - For Cessna 180, 185, 175, and early 182 Years 1956-1961 $1,300.00"

Jaerl..used to fly a 180 hp 172 with constant speed prop and it was nose heavy. When I slowed down for landing, put a couple of cranks up on the trim wheel to help take the force off the wheel (hands off final). On my 170 I would do a couple of cranks foreward to take the foreward push off the wheel so I could do the final hands off. In the Citabria I now fly, as soon as I decrease power I push the trim back so the final can be done hands off, nose down..then it's just a little pull back with the stick to land. Just my 2 bits worth.
HC

Jaerl wrote:My 175 is really nose heavy. The nose drops right under 60 unless you keep some power on and pull hard! I was reading on some other sites that several Avcon Conversions have about 15 lbs in the tail. One guy said he took an old tail section and poured in molten lead. He used the tie down ring to secure it.

I want to remove the seat and put in some camping stuff. That will help but I don't want to carry water just for the sake of extra weight. Plus I don't want something real heavy behind me if I crash. I would rather have 15 lbs in the tail that 100 lbs or useless stuff just to make it balanced. Any of you guys ever done this and how is the best way to go about it?

Sorry Uh what your describing wont be a helped by lead in the tail...........Unless you put so much back there that when you stall it, you just turn into a crumpled mess.

On my old 172 I could push the tail down pretty easy when turning it around. It landed great. Could float down belly first with the stall warning horn on. Then catch it with power.

On the ground, the 175 will take all my weight to just lift the nose wheel. To get slow enough to get the stall warning horn to come on in the 175, the yoke is all the way back, trimmed to climb and power on. If I ever have to go full power it would want to go straight up in that configuration.

Fill about 75% of your tail wheel with antifreeze. It wont be 15 pounds but it's a start and wont hit you in the back of the head if you auger in. No water, it does weird things when the temp hits 32 degrees.

Had an uncle that put lead in the tail of a plane he built. It worked, but I never liked the idea much.

By putting the weight in the farthest aft location, you can use less, lightest aircraft. The Aft CG limit will give you the slowest landing speeds, Reduced stall speeds, shortest landing distance. A lightweight, well balanced airplane is a joy to land on a dirt road. Fighting a fwd limit cg in a Cessna makes a guy earn his pilot pay. Make sure that any balast is structurally secured back there, alot of important cables and push pull tubes moving around. I like the water wheel idea. How about a length of logging chain hanging from the tail hook, keep trimming off links until it feels right.

Guys, my tail wheel is on front. That's probably whats wrong. Maybe if I fill it with helium?

Jaerl wrote:Guys, my tail wheel is on front. That's probably whats wrong. Maybe if I fill it with helium?

Try backing in

Do not mount the battery on the fire wall if you have it in the back now. That will just make matters worse. Selkirk kit #1 is $979.00 and that is for the battery in the rear ( I am still assuming the battery is standard in the rear). You will wonder how you did with out it.

Tim

When the tailwheel is on the front we call it a training wheel! Yes you are correct, the Avcon conversions needed a weight added in the tail to get the weight and balance correct. Have you ever weighed your plane to see where the c of g actually is? If it's that nose heavy it sounds like it's "out of the envelope".

Can not remember how much weight for the 0-360 conversions, but the two 0-470 conversions I have done took a bunch of lead bolted onto the rear bulkhead right above the horizontal. The tri-gear took 11 pounds, the taildragger took almost 20. Only nice thing with the 0-470 conversion is they up the GW of the aircraft by 100 lbs.

It does not surprise me that the 175's are nose heavy. All they are is a 172 with bigger gas tanks and a heavier GO-300 engine. The GO engine turned into a good one once they got the cooling problem fixed with the last 175 model. Unfortunately, they had already gotten the bad rep by then and wound up killing the model. Someone needs to STC a cooling duct for the earlier models to fix their cooling problems.......

Brian.

Oldtech, we did do a new W&B when we got the tanks back in but I haven't even looked at it yet. I am still working on it and I just ordered a lightweight starter today and a new muffler. I plan on using it without the rear seat so I was just going to do a new one when (or if) it ever gets finished.

Tim, I will give Selkirk a call. All I really need is the floor and back panel. I can probably live without the sides for now. I plan on leaving the battery in back. My mechanic has built them before. I want to get a price from him too.

I was looking at the plane the other day and was thinking if you had a rear compartment and no rear seat you could probably pull a front seat out and sleep in there if you had to.

Brian, I also heard that the O-300GO engines needed to run a lot faster to cool right. I guess no one was used to running them at that high of RPM's and the cooling from the oil wasn't enough when running the engine slow.

I know guys that have 175's think they are great. One Avcon 175 I looked at was near Boise and they had 3-175's in a hanger on a private strip. Two were stock and one Avcon. They said they liked the stock ones better. The Avcon was the one for sale.

If you take a look at the Buzzard in my photo albumn, you'll see an Avcon conversion on a 172A with the bolens tailwheel conversion. We ran it as a two place with just the front seats in it. To stay in the envelope and have enough elevator, there was an ammo box with 70 lbs. of lead bolted to the floor in aft baggage. I finally got all that fun of dealing with the forward cg and the lack of rudder authority on the swept back tail conversion to tailwheel out of my system by groundlooping the crap out of it. Got the right wing tip, ripped the right main out of the box, took out the right flap and aileron and generally made for an extremely sporty morning one Saturday. The Buzzard is now in Canada in Calgary and I moved up to the 182....very smart move too as it will do anything the Buzzard would do and lots it wouldn't.

Uh, Jerry--I would respectfully point out that the FAA REQUIRES that one compute a weight and balance for each flight..... If you KNOW from previous calculations that you are within legal W/B range and weight, that's fine, but you need to sit down and COMPUTE a weight and balance before you hurt yourself.

I would NOT nail lead to the tail. If you don't want to buy a Selkirk baggage compartment (they are NOT just a piece of aluminum) then remove your aft baggage bulkhead and SECURE (as in TIE DOWN WELL) your survival kit aft of the main baggage compartment. FIgure out how to secure it so you can get it out of there if you need it bad, but well enough that it isn't going to float around back there. You ARE carrying survival gear, aren't you????

MTV

SixTwoLeemer said:

The pouring of molten lead in the tail is gonna draw jeers from the peanut gallery.

Agree times 1080! Avoid weight at the tail like the plague. People get fixated on increasing the aft moment with a small weight on a long arm. All pilots know that moment equals arm times the weight. Many don't consider that for moment of inertia it is arm SQUARED times weight.

It often doesn't take much weight in the tail to have a moment of inertia too large for the control surfaces at full deflection to overcome the inertia of a fully developed spin.

My 182 has a radio tray behind the stock baggage compartment. Most of these trays have no radio equipment on them so that is a good place to bolt stuff.

Tim