Originally Posted by
Concours77
If the gear was vibrating badly, would an RTO have been initiated?
If it was vibrating badly, then yes. But in this case it wasn't vibrating....at least not enough to be heard on the CVR.
The missing spacer allowed the tyre to track 3 degrees right or left of centre. My feeling is that the tyre would have been tracking off centre...ie scrubbing sideways slightly. When it hit the Titanium strip at 175kts, did the sideways scrubbing cause the tyre to tear more dramatically? Would it have burst at all if it had been tracking straight when it hit the strip or at least have failed less catastrophically? We'll never know but will always wonder.