Nose Wheel and Tire, Yak 52
Includes bushings.
The Yak 52 Nose gear and its mating balloon profile tire were designed to work together.
If you ( or the previous owner) fitted the square profile tire and Cleveland wheel from an American spam can with a steerable nosegear, ( and removed the Russian balloon tire designed to work with a free castoring angled nose strut), should you expect the turning or shimmy characteristics to be the same?
Of course not.
What’s one of the first things we all learned when taxying a 52?
Fail to anticipate and the nosewheel goes to full lock and stays there, leaving you performing donuts at the Fuel Island for the benefit of the assembled crowd.
Next time, you’ll add some opposite brake earlier and use a bit less than take-off power to get out of your parking space. But if you’re a new owner inheriting a square Cleveland nosewheel tire, you probably wonder why the damn Russians designed it like that...all that noise just to get her turning straight.
Also, with that square tire at full lock, a little over-zealous ground handling can crack the brackets for the shimmy dampener on the nose strut casting. (Ask us how we know. - we’ve sold a couple to distressed owners.)
It’s not too late go back to the original design. Those Cleveland tires were often fitted in the late nineties when replacement Russian tires were just too hard to get.