|
Hi
Guys;
Got some good news and bad news. Bad news first. During a flight on
Monday, during climb-out I inadvertently over-boosted and detonated the engine
(more on why later), destroying 1 apex seal in each rotor. It also caused some
damage at the rotor tip. At first inspection I thought I had no damage to the
rest of the engine, but I just discovered a small scuff mark on the rear end
housing. The attached picture shows it rather poorly, but due to the shiny
reflective surface is it hard to take a pic to show it clearly. I'm uncertain if
this means the rotor is now NFG. The apex of the #2 rotor is where the worst
detonation occurred and there is a small notch in the rotor at this location.
Again, I don't know yet if this is any good. The pic of the seals pretty much
says it all. It also shows one of the side seals that broke. There was another
side seal broken as well, but with only a small 2mm piece cleanly broken off the
end, would have been easy to miss.
The pic of the rotor apex also clearly shows remnants of the ceramic
coating that was applied to the rotor faces. So if anything at least this shows
that don't waste your money on this mod.
Oh yeah, the good news (hey it's my attempt at finding a silver lining).
While I knew something was definitely amiss, the engine continued to run and
produce good power while I made a circuit (called tower for a precautionary
landing... didn't want to see them damn fire trucks come out to meet me) and
continued to run until I was on the ground at which time it quietly died. This
is one of the aspects of the rotary that initially attracted me to this engine.
I just didn't expect to find out first-hand. I really don't doubt that it would
have lasted at least a little while longer.
It actually ran so good that I really
didn't believe that there was much if any damage and tried everything yesterday
trying to start it in an effort to avoid removing the engine. After no success
and a call to Tracy, I finally pulled it and took it home. Tore it down this
morning. Viewing the apex seals through the exhaust ports, everything looked
fine. The damage was just past the edge of the port. Surprisingly they actually
still felt solid and had spring in them with no indication of the true amount of
damage. I was beginning to second guess my decision to
teardown.
I'll be using Tracy's new apex seals in the rebuild and am now just
trying to decide which other parts I need.
S. Todd Bartrim
(now into beer drinking mode... lots of beer :-(
Turbo 13B
RV-9Endurance
C-FSTB
http://www3.telus.net/haywire/RV-9/C-FSTB.htm
"Whatever you vividly imagine, Ardently desire, Sincerely
believe in, Enthusiastically act upon, Must inevitably come to pass".
|