If it is not wet I would just service with nitrogen.
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Thanks Steve!
I believe if you try to measure the pressure with the load of the airframe/engine resting on the strut, you will lose a lot of air and be sad.
As I mentioned above, after pulling the lower cowl, it's easy to pull the tail down either with weight on the tail hook (or a couple friends on the inboard-most part of the stab) to fully extend the strut, then pump it to 130~135 psi. While you have it extended you can wipe some hydraulic juice on the exposed chrome to remove any dirt - I just squirt it up into the seal/wiper to flush out the crud, and wipe up with paper towel.
After a couple tries you will get the feel for it. I usually adjust it during annual when I have everything apart and the nose wheel off for bearing service.
Cheers,
GG
Does anyone have a complete written procedure for replacing the seals in the front strut? Thanks.
I looked by keyword and did not find a complete "procedure" here.
There are a lot of helpful tips, search "nose strut", "strut wiper" etc.
I think an enterprising fellow could cut & paste the various suggestions into a cogent procedure from start (Remove engine cowling) to finish (Reinstall engine cowling).
Gilbert, I should have read all the posts more carefully. Steve is a man of few words, but they can be important. See his post #9 - "The Owners Handbook shows 3.5 inches of chrome should be showing. It also has a section on both servicing and rebuilding the nose gear oleo." So I pulled out my POH and there it is, beginning on page 38 section V. Landing Gear Service - on page 40 there is an itemized procedure for how to service/replace the O-rings with the nose strut on the plane. I'm not going to reiterate it here, but thought others might want to know. See page 40. Taking a clue from Glen Geller's posts I also just bought a good high pressure bike tire pump - mine is rated to 220 psi, so pumping up to 130 or 135 psi should be relatively easy. I did a little research on bike pumps and there is a nice balance point between a pump that requires 10,000 strokes, and the high volume ones that only require a few strokes, but people less than 200 pounds have trouble pushing them down. I weigh 148 pounds so that mattered.
I searched and searched and found nothing but I knew I had read it somewhere. I guess it was a case of I missed the forest for the trees. I maintain a couple of Carbon Cubs with these fancy Acme Aero shock struts and use a bicycle pump. Luckily the reservoir is very small because it does make my elbow hurt pumping them up to 250 psi.
Help
Does anybody have the numbers for the nose strut scissor bolts. The device to keep the nose wheel from falling off when you take off. There is also four bushing. My parts manual does not have a picture. A source for those parts would help also. The plane is a 1956 Piper Tripacer PA-22-150. Need to fix the shimmy.
Thanks
The bushings are called out in the parts manual. https://www.univair.com/content/part...dex.html#p=129
If you have the drawing CD it will call out the proper hardware on the drawing number listed on the at the top of the parts call out on the page after the one I linked.