Greetings,

 

Before the storms set in today, I ran the engine enough to get it fairly well tuned.  This is without the cowl, so the oil cooler didn’t have a duct on it.  I ran it a LOT (about an hour), and saw a max of 218 on the coolant, and 170 on the oil.  Of course the evap cores have their ducts in place limiting their airflow some.  Max static was 6150, which is only about 200 rpm at the most above my normal static before.  I’m supposed to have 500 more from the prop rework, but the engine is still really tight, and not broken in that well.  I expect (hope) these numbers will come up in time. 

 

I ended up having the same problem as always, which is idle.  The idle MAP happens to be the same as the MAP when you are at about 2500 or so rpm.  If you set the MAP table for idle, then it’s too lean at 2500, and the engine stumbles on acceleration.  If you set it for 2500, then it’s too rich for idle.  The only solution I have found is to let it be rich for flight idle, but on the ground, turn the mixture knob to about 9:00 position.  

 

The new coolant tanks seems to be working perfectly, and there are still no leaks.  I did find some oil yesterday, and then again today, but eventually figured out that it was oil that was trapped in the fins of the evap cores from the cooler incident.  Now that I have a prop on, and am running higher power settings, I seem to be blowing it out.  Probably should have spray cleaned those :-)

 

The plane is now 100% assembled, and ready to go.  Proper logbook entries will be made for this conditional inspection and major mod.  Just a matter of filling the tanks, and pointing it down the runway now. 

 

Cheers,

Rusty (setting Nomex suit and emergency chute by the door)