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Message
Rusty,
I'm no
expert on the rotary, but in general you could do a compression check/ If
you had any previous compression readings to compare it to, that would be
especially good.
With
that said, and if were me, I'd tear it down and check it out. For
starters, it's not hard to do, and not expensive. Even if everything
looked good, I'd always be wondering about those bearings, but that's just
me.
FWIT
Steve
Brooks
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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