Brake System

From "Construction Notes" Falco Builders Letter, September 1989

In our brake system drawing, which is an incredibly rough sketch that we supply with our kit pending completion of a finished drawing, I show the nylon line to the brake reservoir pushed over the metal tube that comes with the reservoir. When I did this, I was thinking about using polyethylene tubing, which is thin-walled and flexible enough to go over the metal tube. Nylon tubing is thicker skinned and too stiff to go over the tube. Steve Wilkinson found that you could easily make it work by removing the steel tube, sliding the nut and tapered gasket over the nylon line and just eliminate the steel tubing entirely. I have no idea why I didn't think of that.

Steve somehow got under the impression that the brake lines were supposed to go through some of the holes in the "garbage bracket"-no, no, no. This bracket came into existance because with the throttle quadrant, we needed a support for the engine control cables. The only logical way to do this is with a bracket mounted on top of the nose gear bay cover. I can get very passionate about simplicity in design, and to my way of thinking there is no better way to achieve simplicity than to have one part serve multiple purposes. As anyone who has completed his Falco can tell you, there is an enormous confusion of control cables, wires, hoses and tubing in this area.

Because our instrument panel is removable, I also made provisions for mounting the vacuum regulator, pitot and static fittings on this bracket. Since they are installed in the bracket, they stay put when you remove the instrument panel. On the little tab that is bent so that it is vertical in the airplane and faces directly aft, we provide a number of holes. These holes are intended for you to ty-wrap wiring to the bracket so that they will not rub against the engine control cables. In addition, on the sides of the bracket, we have other holes intended for ty-wrapping brakes lines, wiring and anything else that might be loose. These holes are just there to be used if you want them.