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Strange new rattling sound while taxiing

AlanL

I'm New Here
Patron
After I landed the other day - while taxiing and again today while taxiing to get fuel, I heard an odd “rattle” like sound through the headset. I couldn’t hear it when I took the headset off - over the sound of the engine.
Its low frequency and goes away when I add power.
The RV9A has about 300 hours TT and 180SMO. I am a new owner and have logged about 18 hours on this plane.

So far I have not discovered any loose items in the engine compartment.

Any ideas of what I should look for?

Thanks,

Alan
 
Brakes..?

Brake pads are a fairly common rattle on RV's at times when taxiing on some surfaces. Without brake pressure from the pedal, the pads are free to move and the sliders have a designed large clearance. Try to duplicate it then apply both brakes gently and see if it goes away. My RV-4 will echo it through the airframe on rough surfaces.
 
Check these

I've noticed rattles at various times so you might check these:

I had fully reclined the seatback for passenger and the top brace was just resting on top of cross bar instead of engaged in one of the slots. Rattles at certain RPMs.

Gear leg fairing had come loose at top worm gear and slid down

A single screw in top baggage bulkhead not fully tightened was enough to cause a rattle or low buzzing sound inflight.

Good luck
 
My tip-up canopy latch's steel "fingers" didn't initially connect securely with the catches on the canopy, causing the canopy to vibrate during taxi. The sound was loud and obvious. I was never able to get the fit great, but wrapping a little 20 mil pvc tape on the catch helped a lot.
 
Try taxing with the engine shut off and that reduces a lot of noise which can tell you if it is coming from the airframe or the engine. If not from the airframe, then you can taxi again and shut off avionics one at the time to see if any single device is causing the noise but avionics related noise will most likely be a RF noise which is very different than rattle

As for the brake pads, it is true that they could rattle but I believe it would be very hard to hear them if the engine is running. The noise is not that loud.
 
Rattle

Hi Alan,

How close are your exhaust pipes to the cowl and/or firewall. If close reposition with greater clearance and see if that fixes the rattle. I have had this happen twice and both times it was an exhuast pipe.

Cheers,

db
 
Rattle

Second the check on the exhaust. Also, put some sandbags or similar on the horizontal stab, each side close to the fuselage until the tail goes down to raise the nosegear off the ground. Move the nosegear in all directions to verify that the gear is lot loose in the socket on the motor mount. This is a critical thing to check on every condition inspection.

Ed
 
could be a lot of different things. One that appears only at idle / low RPM with the engine running is the baffle hitting the cowl. Pull the top cowl off and look for contact marks on the inside.

Larry
 
Thanks for all the input. Good notes for future reference. I believe the noise I had was the latch of the sliding canopy - which I cracked open for air. :eek:
 
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