Message
Greetings,
Well, I'm 3 for
3 with the local DAR, and now have an airworthiness certificate for the
plane. This is getting easier every time, and I didn't anticipate that
it was going to be a problem.
As soon as he
left, I started replacing my primary injectors. Of course this meant pulling
the turbo and intake out of the way enough to get the injectors out. That
was all pretty easy, since I didn't have to remove any hoses or anything
to move the turbo and intake a couple inches. The new injectors are in,
and don't leak fuel under pressure. Unfortunately, I couldn't run the engine
due to the incredible thunderstorms. Heck, I feel lucky to be alive with
some of the lightning that was hitting all around my hanger :-)
Now, here's the
problem of the day. I used that exhaust wrap stuff that everyone sells
for wrapping headers, but I wrapped the turbo with it. As I was removing
the stuff to get to the nuts to remove the turbo, I found that it had cooked
into a hardened form, and literally crumbled to (irritating, fiberglass-like)
dust when trying to get it off. It was OK on the pipe itself, but anywhere
that touched the turbo was toast. This sort of puts me back to square one
with heat shielding. I can probably go ahead and run the engine tomorrow,
since the top cowl is off, and there's plenty of airflow, but I will certainly
need to do something before closing up the cowl and flying.
Option 1- I can
probably make a flat stainless shield that would go between the intake and
turbo. This would block the heat from the intake, but wouldn't protect
anything else. If I do this, I'll need some sort of heat coating for the
inside of the cowl.
Option 2- I still
like the idea of wrapping the whole turbo with some sort of heat insulator,
but need suggestions of what could be used. Eventually, if the turbo is
working out, I'd probably buy a new turbo and manifold, and have them ceramic
coated. The current turbo and manifold are Ebay items, that I got cheap.
The manifold has the standard cracks, and the turbo has a bit more play
than I like in the shaft. I never had any plans to run these for a long
time, just long enough to prove the turbo is worth keeping.
So, for all you
folks that know more about heat shielding material than I do, what should
I be looking at, and would you think this material would be suitable for
wrapping the turbo itself?
Thanks for any
suggestions.
Rusty (legal,
but stupid enough to fly yet)