Bill, it's my understanding that when the screen-door type springs were first supplanted by the later type, the new ones suffered a number of failures. I bought a set when Lancair made them available (my early 235 had the screen-door springs) but before I had a chance to install them, stories from the field re: breaking springs, made me reconsider. It looked like I'd have to retain the earlier type springs, in addition to the new ones, for redundancy, completely defeating the original reasons for the change, which seemed to be: "they look kinda Mickey Mouse" or some such. Because of the early failures, I never did install the new springs but merely added a second screen-door spring to each side to provide the redundancy I felt I needed. Incidentally, it's a lot easier to replace the s-d springs at each annual.

It's also my understanding that the new springs were redesigned following the early failures (different metallurgy ??) that is supposed to have solved the problem - but unfortunately, there's still no back-up if one breaks. In my opinion, the gear down lock is a bad place to have a potential single-point failure mechanism. I'd say you were pretty lucky to find your failures before curling a prop blade (and the possibility of an engine tear-down).

Regards,

Dan Schaefer
N235SP --
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