I ran the engine for an hour straight tonight. It seemed to run well but I do have a couple of questions that maybe this esteemed group can comment on.

 

1. Engine starts out at about 1300RPM at idle when cold and Oil PSI briefly is 81PSI and then drops to 65 or so after 15-20 seconds. Then as things warm up the RPM’s increase and oil pressure drops.  RPM levels out at about 1550 and oil pressure hovers around 30PSI.  Is 30PSI an OK oil pressure level at that RPM?  I did increase the RPM briefly toward the end of the hour and oil pressure did go up. At 1900-2000 RPM oil pressure was around 50PSI.
2. At the 1550 RPM the MicroTech says manifold pressure is 9-10Hg (18-20PSI).  Does that sound reasonable?
3. EGT’s are 2000-2050F.  Seems a tad high to me!!  My EGT probes are located about 2.5” from the rotor housing.  When I shut it down my exhaust manifold/muffler was a very nice glowing red.  It’s made out of Inconel and is .06 thick so it seems to hold up pretty well.  But if it’s like this at 1600RPM what’s it going to be at 5800RPM??

 

Cooling seems to be OK at the moment.  When ever it gets to 212F I’ve got the MicroTech setup to turn on my radiator fan and it immediately heads down and goes to 180F in 1-2 minutes.  Oil temps never got above 150F.  But we are in Washington and the air temp was between 45F and 50F so I’m sure that helped.

 

Thanx (rethinking fuel return and heater hoses)

Joe Hull

Redmond (Seattle), Washington

Cozy MkIV #991 (working on Engine & Electrical & Finishing)

http://www.maddyhome.com/canardpages/pages/JoeHull/index.html