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Maybe with his new engine he changed
something, but last time I looked any level difference in his sump
wasn't for "reserve" purposes. It was just how he mounted his
pumps (and perhaps a small - 1"? - difference to give each pump's
filter "sock" a look at different fuel).
In defense of the Subaru engine, I've owned a lot of cars with
these and can say they're nothing like a Lycosaurus. They're very
stable, compact, almost vibration-free, and really hard to kill (I
ran my first Subie 50k miles without an oil change when I was just
a "stupid kid", blew the head gasket, and ran it another 10k with
a blown head before I managed to kill it). This is a very
advanced, modern engine design that gets great mileage, takes a
turbo easily, and recent versions have direct-port injection,
variable valve timing, and so on.
I still prefer a rotary, but this would absolutely be my second
choice. At least if you do have to replace a head, it won't cost
you several thousand bucks! In fact, if somebody had products like
Tracy's RD-1B and EC3 available for it, I would almost certainly
have built around it instead of the rotary. I think its
lower/wider profile would have fit better under my cowl.
On 8/16/2012 12:55 PM, Bill Bradburry wrote:
Chris,
Motorcycles
have a reserve because they don’t
normally have a fuel gage. This keeps you from
having an engine stoppage
out in the middle of nowhere and no way to know
about it before hand and no way
to get to a station. With an airplane it is not
generally recommended
that you have an engine stoppage.
If Al Wick has
built a reserve into his
plane, my esteem for him as a risk analyst has taken
a drop. What that
will cause is he will be increasing the number of
gallons of unusable fuel and
he will have to pay to carry them around everywhere
he flies. He will
have to have an engine stoppage in order to get any
use out of the
system. Planning for that in an airplane is just
not well considered!
Some less moderate than I might even call it stupid!
As far as the
rotary vs. Subaru goes, why
would you go to the effort and expense to install an
alternative horizontally
opposed piston engine when Lycosaurus and
Continental make pretty good ones for
airplanes and they can be installed in less than a
week in a homebuilt
plane. Every part you build to install an
alternative engine gives you
one more failure possibility. You can buy proven
parts to install
aircraft engines.
Bill B
From: Rotary motors in aircraft
[mailto:flyrotary@lancaironline.net] On
Behalf Of Chris Barber
Sent:
Thursday, August 16, 2012
12:04 PM
To: Rotary motors in aircraft
Subject:
[FlyRotary] Re: fuel pump
replaced
I am using two
fuel pumps. The Aux was
always quieter. Now they sound about the same. I
guess since, IIRC,
the primary was always louder I "assumed" it was
normal and was just
limited to the individual pump.
I was just
reviewing Al Wick's sight. He hates
the rotary (ok, that may be too strong, but he is
not a fan). He is using
a Subaru. I was looking at his sump tank. He is
using in the tank
pumps, which I do not wish to do as of right now.
However, something he
did which I did kinda like was that he had his
pumps drawing from
different levels in the tank, like my motorcycle
does for it reserve.
That way, if the primary pumps runs dry, you can
switch to the second pump and
have a bit more fuel....hopefully at least enough
to pull your head out and get
on the ground. This seems pretty easy, especially
with inline
pumps, to do and like a good idea. Seems as if you
would just have to
have one pump out location higher than the other
and you have a bit of a reserve.
Yeah, you should be paying attention to
fuel management but
this seems like some cheap back up. However, I
could be
missing something as currently I am feeding both
pumps from the same
outlet. Thoughts?
Chris
Chris,
Is
there a difference in sound between the
new pump and the old one you are still
using? I think that they should
both sound the same. Mine do.
Bill B
From: Rotary
motors in aircraft
[mailto:flyrotary@lancaironline.net] On
Behalf Of Chris Barber
Sent:
Thursday, August 16, 2012
10:43 AM
To:
Rotary motors in
aircraft
Subject:
[FlyRotary] fuel pump
replaced
I replaced
my faulty fuel pump. The new
pump is MUCH more quite. I suspect the
old one was on the way to failure
for a while and finally when belly up. It
was really noisy.
When I took it off I applied power to
both independently and the old one
was just plain dead.
I hope I
have addressed the few gremlins
that has kept me on the ground the last
few weeks and will get to fly later
today.
FWIW.
Chris
Barber
Houston KEFD
Velocity
SE
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