Brodhead Pietenpol Association

Plans call for a 1/4" piece of steel at the round attachment point on the belly. Plans also call for 5/16" steel down at the axle area (both are joined by the shock strut). To buy those in 4130 (plans don't specify a particular type), I'm looking at a six week timeline (why is everyone out of stock?). I'm thinking of buying it at the local hardware store. I can get 1/4" steel, but there's no info on it at all....but it's weldable. Thoughts?

John C

Ask your supplier to search for 34MoCr4 steel, Which has a tensile strength that’s about 10% higher than 4130.

You will want to use fully annealed or preferably, normalized, steel in your application.

If you do find some let us all know where you located it and what the cost is.

Whatever you do steer away from plain-vanilla hardware store steel as it will probably not have the strength required for Aircraft use.

Thank you!

Just to let you know, I am buying some Aluminum at onlinemetals dot com and noticed they have .25" 4130 in stock.
I took many pictures at Broadhead this last year and notice multiple Piets have not used .25" in this location. Just saying.
Some planes I noticed have installed bearings on one end of the shock strut and this is installed between two plates of steel. If you check out the welded shock gear on WW's flycorvair site you will see an example of this. He wrote in reply to a posted question that he used .125" on that bracket. I'm not an engineer and I'm not telling you what to do. I am also working out my gear at this time and wanted to share with you my observations.