8-9-03  /  8 hours  /  1308 total

Spent a long time running the engine today.  Put just a bit over an hour on it, and learned a lot about programming.  I just couldn’t get enough fuel at the top end, and had too much fuel at the bottom.  Unfortunately, most of what I learned was that you can’t really program it with the manifold pressure lines disconnected.  I had the computer out to replace the software, but ended up putting it back with the original software.  It seems I forgot to put the lines back on.  Doh!  This also explains why my new boost gauge wasn’t working as expected.  Yep, I found that at the very end of the day, so tomorrow, I get to try again, with more hope of success. 

The Tiny Tach seems to have a problem at higher RPMs.  It’s dead accurate around 2100 rpm (verified with optical tach), but one time it read static rpm as 4500, and another time it read 5900.  What was even more disturbing was that it went up from 5900 to 6100 as I decreased the throttle.  Groan…  Bought a Sun tach this afternoon, and will give the ignition coil trigger another try.   

In better news, the water temp never went above 170 degrees, and the oil maxed at about 230.  That’s a bit high for the oil, but it’s Mobile One, SuperSyn, so it can take it.  This is without the cooling fan, because it blew a 30A fuse when I turned it on.  That also caused the engine to almost quit from the power surge.  I guess the prop wash got the fan spun up, which created a voltage across the fan motor.  Turning on the switch seems to overload the circuit, and blow the fuse.  Fortunately, since it seems to cool pretty well without the fan, I remove it, and saved 7 lbs at a moment arm of 20”.  It also helps my nose heavy situation a bit.  The new W&B calculations are as follows:

Right Main- 431 lb

Left Main- 438.75 lb

Tailwheel- 25.25 lb

Empty weight- 895 lb

Finally, I did verify that both sets of injectors work.  Ed was right about having to be a little rich at low power before turning off the primary injectors.  It just takes a moment for the secondaries to become effective it seems.