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Message
I have built drag engines and stock car engines,
went from tearing down and replacing bearings in drag nitro burners every
weekend to just tearing down and then simply leaving alone until oil and filter
showed metal, because seemed to do and stay together better that way.
I rebuilt automatic transmissions and their parts for several years. We
started with the factory induced belief that the best thing to do with all the
hydraulics and valves was to completely disassemble and clean. I became
convinced the least done, if machine not filled with burned clutch material
and/or metal was fix what was broken, clean as well as possible, filter new
fluid to try and clean out what couldn't be drained; and, leave the rest of it
alone. From that, I went in with several other fellows rebuilding hard
parts, reselling soft parts and ultimately manufacturing them, and they
ultimately wound up becoming major oem gasket and seal supplier. They
later accumulated enough data to support my "spelunker" (disturb as little
as possible) theory. I have worked around aircraft folks for years
and have pretty much become convinced that same thought applies there as well;
even though I will admit you might want to be sure and check it out a little
better. As the old saying goes, "If it ain't really broken, don't try and
fix it." JWID, IMHO
jofarr, soddy tn
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, December 19, 2004 9:58
AM
Subject: [FlyRotary] Re: Engine damage
thoughts
Mornin' all,
While I appreciate all the reassurance of
how easy the engine is to rebuild, that isn't the problem. I've got all
the tools, and have watched Bruce's video a couple times. I've even
taken engines apart, and done mock assemblies. The only thing I
haven't done is actually put one together for real, but I have no doubt that I
can do that.
The problem is that the "weekend" it will
take, will last at least a month because I would send my rotors off
to be ceramic coated. If I were to tear it down, I'd
also replace the apex seals with the new indestructible ones,
because some day there's going to be a supercharger on this engine :-)
While these upgrades are another reason to want to tear the engine down,
Murphy's law states that my engine components will be laying all over the
hanger when the county tells me to vacate. It's already going to be
a nightmare to move all my stuff out, and I don't want the complication of
trying to pack all this extra stuff up, and move it. I sure will be glad
when the hanger is rebuilt. If I decide to do the tear down, I'll
probably just finish packing up my hanger crap, and walk away from the RV-3
until the hanger is finished.
Once again, thanks for the comments.
It doesn't sound like there's any clear consensus on which way to go, so I'll
just have to think about it, and make a decision. Maybe the contents of
the oil filter will make the decision for me, though that could only be in a
bad way.
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