Front Gear Link & Brace failure

[wgrasqu]

Long story of my painful annual.. So I am finishing my owners assist annual on my Arrow and as I was closing up the rear seat section I noticed the Hoof Valve was leaking a bit. Not wanting to wait, I had my IA pull it today and replace the rings that were fairly worn. Soon after we tested the gear, all ok in normal ops but noticed that when we push the emergency lever the left wheel would not lock like it did 3 weeks ago (when we tested it at the start of the annual). This lead to us pulling the linkage and checking it for binding, again all ok but still it would not drop fully.

It seemed like when I push the emergency lever the cylinder was stopping the linkage just before it would lock, however, it works fine in normal ops as it extends fully. We then pulled the cylinder and replaced it with a space to see if that was the issue.

This is when things go south fast, when we finished replacing the cylinder and started pulling the gear up when we heard a loud bang from the front gear. Mind you our attention was on the left gear so that was a surpirse. When we looked under the cowling we saw the the front gear link snapped near the attachment to the cylinder. Not sure if there was a crack before I had the plane but this sucks..

Here some pics if any of you'll have seen this before. So now I am looking for a new front brace and we still have to figure out why my left gear will not lock when I pull the emergency lever.

 

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[Avidflyer2]

 

[wgrasqu]