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Rusty,
When Lynn, Ken, Ed, Tracy, Charlie, Al and a few others speak up I pay particular attention. It'll only take a weekend to tear the engine apart!!! I agree with Ken that there is a good chance that the rotors expanded and scored the side housings. Maybe not, but it only takes a weekend to tear it apart and put it back together. Honest, you'll sleep better KNOWING the motor is OK.
(wish my wife would let me buy another non-running experimental airplane which would be #3!!!!)
Ken Powell
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I should have thought of what Lynn said, when I
first posted. Check with your FBO. They'll almost
certainly know of a shop that can analyze your oil
(from the filter) for metallic contaminents.
The filter has already been drained, but I didn't wash the screen. I'm quite interested to take a closer look at it tomorrow, and even have my magnifying glass next ready. There might well be some drilling chips from the former oil cooler, but they should be easily distinguishable from metal from the bearings. I figure I'll take a close look tomorrow, then clean the filter, and reinstall it. I'll probably use cheap oil for about an hour or two on the ground, then will look at the filter again. If it's clean, I'll fill it with good oil, and stay in gliding distance for at least 10 hours at high power.
Rusty
Your oil will be clean as there will be no bearing damage, when I blew an oil line and seized my engine and restarted it three times after it cooled down so as to get to a better landing spot the oil was so clean I could have reused it.
This is a good thing to know as if you find yourself in a similar situation wait about 30 seconds and you can restart the engine and milk a little more out of it, what the hell its toast any way and you will have to rebuild it so get your last nickels worth out of it.
Pull the exhaust off and look through the ports and you will find that at least the rear housing will be blued from heat when the rotor expanded and seized to it, most of the damage is on the inner part of the housing which you cannot see but you will still be able to see some on the outer sections.
Ken Welter
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