Mailing List flyrotary@lancaironline.net Message #43280
From: Steve Brooks <cozy4pilot@gmail.com>
Subject: RE: [FlyRotary] Another Turbo Bites the dust
Date: Sat, 21 Jun 2008 16:20:24 -0400
To: Rotary motors in aircraft <flyrotary@lancaironline.net>

David,

Sorry to hear about your turbo.   Especially sorry since I have one also.  As I recall though, your turbo was an 86-87, which had a somewhat different design.  When I had mine done, the core was an 89-91, which was about $200 cheaper.  Bryan at BNR turbo told me that the 89-91 was much easier to upgrade was the reason.

 

I don’t know if mine will last any longer though. 130 hours of mostly WOT doesn’t really sound all that bad.  It will be interesting to see what went bad on it.  Sounds like it may be the bearings though from the sounds of it.

 

Regards,

Steve Brooks

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Rotary motors in aircraft [mailto:flyrotary@lancaironline.net]On Behalf Of David Leonard
Sent: Friday, June 20, 2008 11:47 PM
To: Rotary motors in aircraft
Subject: [FlyRotary] Another Turbo Bites the dust

 

Today I flew from San Diego to Brownville Texas to attend a formation flying clinic.  After 6 hours of WOT flight I was descending through 5000' (down from 15.5k) an just a few miles from the airport when I had a sudden and sickening drop in manifold pressure.   The engine was still running fine, and I had plenty of altitude to make the runway, so I continued on debating weather or not to flip the turbo oil shutoff switch.  I had grown to respect this turbo so much that I finally decided that I had just blown out a fitting somewhere in the intake system downstream of the turbo.  I even continued on to a low pass for show rather than just landing.  When I eventually had time to take off the cowl I was dissapointed to find that all the fitting were in place and that the compressor wheel turns only with significant resistance.

So the turbo is dead, and I am out of the formation clinic and will have to decide tomorrow about flying home with a dead turbo.  Will maybe be able to take a look in the hot side and see what I see.

This turbo was the TO4 hybrid with a fixed wide open waste gate.  It had 130 hrs of mostly hard duty.  Sigh.

--
David Leonard

Turbo Rotary RV-6 N4VY
http://N4VY.RotaryRoster.net
http://RotaryRoster.net

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