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From: "Christopher Barber" <CBarber@TexasAttorney.net>
To: "Rotary motors in aircraft" <flyrotary@lancaironline.net>
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Subject: Re: [FlyRotary] Coolant leak - the teardown
Date: Sun, 9 Mar 2008 21:14:38 -0500
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So guys, what do y'all think.  What do you think is causing the coolant in 
the rotor housings.  I really want to figure this out before I put the dang 
thing back together.  Your help is appreciated.  TIA.

All the best,

Chris


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Staten" <Dastaten@earthlink.net>
To: "Rotary motors in aircraft" <flyrotary@lancaironline.net>
Sent: Sunday, March 09, 2008 8:29 PM
Subject: [FlyRotary] Coolant leak - the teardown


> Well.. today we tore the engine apart.. the short and sweet of it is there 
> is no obvious source of a coolant leak.
>
> Took the engine apart without too much trouble..
>
> As we pulled off all the housings we checked the rotor faces, the grooves, 
> the seals and the intake ports for any sign of a leak or blowout. None was 
> forthcoming. I had expected to see a blown out coolant o-ring groove, but 
> all were intact. Felt the intake ports, no sign of a problem there either. 
> I had only ported the center iron, so the other two end irons were stock. 
> So as it stands, we have an engine that is giving us no obvious reason for 
> a coolant leak. The bolts werent loose at all.. they were so snug from 
> tape and silicone it took a hammer and vise grips to extract them once 
> they were untightened.. So thats the semi good news..... nothing obvious.
>
> Now the bad news..
>
> When we took the engine apart, I was concerned about how the rebuild 
> itself went.. and how things held up to our first attempt at building the 
> engine. I examined things as we took them apart and paid particular 
> attention to the front end.
>
> I was even showing Chris how the front bearings can be a problem if you 
> loosen the front bolt and cause a bearing to get pinched.. well the front 
> bearing on the outside of the thrust plate looked fine. Took off the 
> thrust plate and discovered that the other bearing had destroyed itself. 
> At this point, Chis chimed in that there was metal bits in the oil when he 
> drained it, and lo and behold the bits resembled the roller pins in the 
> bearing..
>
> The spacer had welded itself with the inner ring on the destroyed bearing, 
> forming a spoked wheel, and the inside of the thrust plate had wear damage 
> to it as well.
>
> I am certain i know when this happened. During assembly, everything went 
> as it should. end play was ok. I had installed the stock pulley on the 
> front at the time of rebuild. After we added the PSRU I was no longer able 
> to check end play, as it secured the engine's flywheel travel.
>
> At some point, we purchased and I added a double pulley, and while i took 
> care not to let things shift around, I am suspecting that this is when it 
> happened. The lesson: don't remove the front nut if you cant check end 
> play or put the engine vertical.
>
> The remainder of things looked great - no missing pieces, nothing burnt, 
> no gouges... 10 hours of use on the ground and thats what weve found.
>
> Dave
>
> --
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