Removing broken tiger needles?

What are the tricks of the trade to get the broken needle out that is flush?

Have you taken the lock nut off? That should give you a little to get a hold of.

It's apart, the needle is flush with nothing to grab.

I used to do this a lot. Sometimes they will come out if you loosen the collet and press your thumb against the stub while rotating the thumb counterclockwise. If not, take a Moto Tool with a dangerous disk (part number 409) and cut a slot in the needle. If the needle breaks flush with the end of the spraybar, you can cut the slot in the needle parallel to the slot in the spraybar without adversely affecting the spraybar. Remove the needle with a tiny screwdriver.

You will get some contradicting, bogus advice from stunt flyers who've probably done this less than a hundred times each in their lives.

LAST EDITED ON Jul-24-04 AT 00:05 AM (CDT)
 
It may help to warm it up some... Then I use a jewelers file to cut a slight grove and jewelers screw driver to extract

Zeke,
Howard's technique works fine, but I am on the low tech scale of things. I have used a small triangular file across the end of the broken needle across the slits in the compression portion of the spray bar with similar results. Just use the little flat tipped screwdriver to back it out. Occasionally you will find that there is a little lip at the fracture site that you can push on with a pin and back it out enough to grab with foreceps.

Good luck with whichever technique you choose.

John, you must have flown some combat, too. Yes, if there's a piece sticking up a little off center, you can push it with a pin. I forgot that one. It works some of the time. The thumb works in about 30 percent of the cases. The pin works in an additional 10 percent of the cases if the thumb fails. The Moto Tool works in an additional 40 percent of the cases if the other two fail.

I like this Supertigre stuff. They are the only engines I know anything about. As one of my colleagues at work said today, "I can't do the stuff I try to do now, but I know how to do stuff that no longer has any value."

Breaking needles has to be the biggest pain in the neck in learning to fly Control Line. I wondered why no one did anything about it back when I was learning. Combat fliers use remote needles or stub needles these days for this reason.

How many times have you said 'it may still be set' rinsed the dirt off, and put it back up?

More than I should have.

Get a new one from Tower $5.95.....IF all things fail

Take an eraser end of a number 2 pencil and unscrew it by pressing the eraser on to the broken needle. I have used that more than once. It works for me.