SUPER idea Buly. I wish I had collected all the incidents of this
sort for a troubleshooting hint list but the time to do it has escaped me.
Haven't even had the time to check Bob's Wiki site (another GREAT idea) to see
what might be there already. If anyone has or builds such a list like you
suggest, I would be happy to include it in the EC2 installation guide and
publish on my website.
Coil Woes
Not that the cause is a great mystery (I think it is my high under cowl
temps) but I just replaced the second coil to fail on my engine. Thanks to
the dual ignition nature of the rotary, the only thing it caused was an
imbalance in the EGTs. But this time it was an intermittent failure which
made it very difficult to nail down.
To make it easier to find (and as an installation trouble
shooting tool) , I added two diagnostic modes to the EC2. All
future EC2s (and updated ones) will have this feature. One of
them fires the coils as if the engine were running at 3000 rpm. The
other does the same thing with the injectors. To find the bad coil I
plugged the coils into 4 old plugs sitting on top of the engine and started the
coil diagnostic mode and waited until I saw the spark on one plug stop
momentarily. Gottcha!
IR plugs
Speaking of sparkplugs, I installed the stock RX-8 NGK iridium plugs in my
engine about 50 flight hours ago. During the course of troubleshooting
the ignition problem, I looked at the plugs for the first time
and was very impressed. After 50 hours the NGK RX-7 plugs (BUR-7/9 EQ) I
previously used would be working fine (on auto fuel) but would be noticeably
eroded, especially on the center electrode. After 250 hours they would be
so far gone that I wonder how they worked at all. At 50 hours the iridium plugs
showed absolutely no wear whatsoever on their very thin center and ground
electrodes. I examined them under a microscope to be sure
my aging eyeballs were not fooling me. This will be my plug of
choice in the future. As far as heat range, it looked like they were
on the cold side which was surprising.
Tracy
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2005 10:50
AM
Subject: [FlyRotary] Troubleshooting
database
I was going to suggest this to Tracy, to ease his load on
the phone
calls. But I know how busy he is, so maybe we can create
the
database. Everybody here once in a while comes against problem
that
takes (sometimes) weeks to solve. If all that is reported
with
simptoms and solutions found, maybe next time we can look it up
there
before calling Tracy?
Latest example:
After getting my
updated EC from Tracy I had hell of a time for
couple of months.
Engine was hard to start, very rich, fouling plugs.
I returned it to
Tracy and he found nothing wrong. One day after
starting it by using
starting fluid, I noticed my MP reading stuck on
29.8. Ahaaa!
Started looking and found a MP hose fitting
disconnected. The EC was
reading full throttle and was dumping fuel
accordingly, plus the
fuel press. regulator was increasing the FP.
If we had a Q&A type list
maybe I would have found it much sooner?
What do you
think?
Buly
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