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Message
Greetings
again,
I've been thinking more
about the engine, and wondering what the chances are that there's any damage
inside.
I'm pretty sure I noticed
the oil about the instant it started to lose any significant amount. As
soon as the oil started to leak, I pulled the engine back to idle, and descended
ASAP. I'm sure I was doing at least 2000 fpm from 6000 to 2000 ft,
which only accounts for 2 minutes of time. At 2000 ft, is when I tried to
throttle up, and the engine quit, so no time after that counts. I'm
absolutely sure the engine quit because I had the mixture knob set way lean
for cruise, and not because it seized up.
This means that at worst,
the engine idled for 2 minutes with no oil pressure. My guess would be
that it was more like 30 seconds or less. With this in mind, I'm thinking
that it's worth doing some ground runs of the engine to see how healthy it
seems. If I can thoroughly run it on the ground without problems, then I
can follow that with about 10 hours of circling the field. By that point,
I can't imagine having any further concerns. If there was a problem, it
would damage the engine further, but still continue to until I made it
to an airport. If I'm wrong about how much damage there might be, it
will get expensive, but shouldn't be life threatening.
Many of you have a lot more
experience with these engines than I do. Does this sound like a reasonable
plan?
Thanks,
Rusty (late for the airport
as always)
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