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Rusty,
You can inspect the main bearings without disassembling the engine itself. Of course, you do have to remove that big *$#@&*+ nut on the flywheel side. But you can then remove the bearing holder and inspect the bearing. If you don't want to dance with the big breaker bar, you can go in from the other end by removing the front cover (probably easier). Might be worth the peace of mind. Mark S. -----Original Message-----
From: Rotary motors in aircraft on behalf of Steve Brooks
Sent: Sat 12/18/2004 4:27 PM
To: Rotary motors in aircraft
Subject: [FlyRotary] Re: Engine damage thoughts
MessageRusty,
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
-----Original Message-----
From: Rotary motors in aircraft [mailto:flyrotary@lancaironline.net]On
Behalf Of Russell Duffy
Sent: Saturday, December 18, 2004 12:37 PM
To: Rotary motors in aircraft
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)
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