Mexico City Airport – 1987

Here are two pics that I took of Canadair North Star CF-TGF (DC-4M2 – ex-Trans Canada Airlines) at Mexico City Airport back in 1987. It operated as ‘Wings’ cafe since 1965. I have heard that it is no longer there.

I had a link to an ‘Offroad Motorcycle Site’ that did a search for a B-25 that went down in behind Shawnigan Lake. I can’t find it anymore – too bad because it had the directions to it with GPS coordinates. Does anybody here remember if the original post was on this site?

I have to agree with Jackd on this one chaps, many moons ago we had similar issues with 2 aircraft stored at Luton Airport. The Boeing 720 prototype and a old AeroAmerica 707 both aircraft were parked up for a number of years over near the engine Run up bay and had a number of Brake units seized, The USAF at the time were buying up 707/720B aircraft flying them to the Desert and stripping for spares for the KC135 fleet so I was tasked with a gang of handlers to go and fetch them !!.

The procedure was as follows.
1. Jack up the wheel with a bottle jack.
2. Take the wheel off (needs a good soak in penetrating oil to help slide off the brake unit Cogs)
3. Remove the Brake unit (Ring of bolts in the center) and blank off the hydraulic line
4. Refit the wheel minus the brake unit.

we could then tow the aircraft and refit the serviced brake unit & new tyre in comfort of a heated hangar :applause:

As a footnote the 707 Made it back but the 720B had corroded badly and was scrapped at Luton in 1981

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Photo Dunlop

Thank you for chiming in Amarok – you gave a detailed description of exactly how I would approach this job and the Dunlop photo gives everyone a better idea of the bits involved here. There is no need here of going to the effort of removing the gear leg and doing a bench disassembly – I have done many gear leg changes on low wing aircraft and know the back breaking conditions that come into play here. I do think the offending part here is a wheel assembly outer bearing that has become fused to the axle shaft. Get past that and things would flow quite quickly. Forget the WD40 and mousemilk garbage that is being suggested and go for a modern age product to get things moving. One thought that came to mind would be to put a wheel nut wrench on the existing wheel nut and torque it to some extremely high value to push the outer bearing race inward – that might crack it lose. The only damage would be to the bearing itself, which is unserviceable and is readily available from most bearing shops. Just trying to be helpful here…..

Once aircraft brakes are seized there is very little that can usually be done. The brake shoes within the brake drum are quite a close-tolerance fit (without actually binding, of course) and it doesn’t take much exposure to moisture to close that gap. The problem is that the brake linings are hygroscopic. That is, they absorb water/moisture. Brakes, by their very nature get hot on a regular basis when in use and this is sufficient to drive out any moisture and normally does not present a problem. Larger aircraft braking systems comprise brake packs with layers of brake discs (just like the front wheel brakes on a car but several of them) interposed between packs of brake pads. Exactly the same process occurs here but, in this case, the brake pack may be able to be separated from the wheel rim and the wheel removed allowing access to the brake unit. It is, though, a very difficult job and probably beyond the understanding and capacity of the average museum, unless there are ex-wheel bay volunteers to hand.

Anon.

I just read a Javelin profile website and they came equipped with Dunlop disc brakes. Being an aircraft mechanic, I found your lengthy addition to this thread to be largely off base from reality. Your suggestion that they came equipped with drum brakes is completely incorrect. Having been involved with the movement of several aircraft with disc brake issues in my lengthy career, I would suggest that it would be quite easy to disable and have the aircraft towable once more. The wheel itself can be removed easily because the discs/rotors are only working on each other and the wheel is ‘splined’ onto the discs. The brake can be dis-assembled once the wheel is removed to the point of removing the offending disc/rotor components and by leaving the major brake carrier in situ. The wheel can be re-installed and the aircraft is now moveable.

Here’s some more. You’re right on the squadron – this was the now disbanded 409th Nighthawk group. I remember them fondly racing through the inland valleys to the west of the Comox airbase. I was a lumberjack working up in the mountains and they would go screaming by at a lower level. Trouble was there was no visibility and I to this day do not know how they navigated their way through the crud.

Martin Mars.

Good eye. This one is CF-BTX – which is probably one of the ones you saw in Alberta back in the day. Coulson Logging pulled it off of a hillside up the BC coast when they were heli-logging nearby. It had crashed there back in the ’40s.

I used to work at that airport before they de-activated it in the late ’80s. There were many stories of early misadventures that were told by the old timers that I knew. If it did ever happen, my guess is that it occurred post-war when Lancs were operating in the area. I have comprehensive lists of wartime crashes for the area but what happened after remains unknown.

Here’s another animal that was stored there during my time. Guess what it is.