From: "Russell Duffy" <13brv3@bellsouth.net>
Date: 2004/12/18 Sat PM 12:36:51 EST
To: "Rotary motors in aircraft" <flyrotary@lancaironline.net>
Subject: [FlyRotary] Engine damage thoughts

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)