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I had to set my RV-6 down on highway 395 near Bishop Tuesday, and here is
the story. Mostly things I could have done better, some that I did right or
otherwise got lucky. It is an RV6 tip up with a turbocharged Mazda rotary
engine.
Hi
Dave,
Congratulations on doing enough things right to avoid damage, or
injury to yourself, or others. With so much going against
you, I'm not sure you could hope for any better outcome. I don't
think I've ever heard of anyone losing oil, water, and the alternator all at
once.
It will be
really interesting to hear what you find when you look at the engine
later. Does the engine have coolant, or oil in it now?
If there's
coolant, then I'm wondering if the stop leak plugged the passages in the
radiator enough that the thicker Evans NPG couldn't
circulate. If the engine overheated enough to cause the side
housings to warp, then it would have taken out the oil seals, and side
seals. That would cause the loss of compression, and loss of oil through
the exhaust, and breather tube. I'm not sure how long it would take
to dump all your oil that way. I know when I cranked mine after the
oil out incident, it looked like the plane had a smoke system installed, so
it might not take long.
The apparent
alternator failure is also a mystery. I can't imagine why it would pick
that time to die, or blow a fuse.
I'm afraid
you may not find too many re-usable parts inside this engine
:-(
Good luck
getting it home. A flat bed wrecker is great for hauling
fuselages. It will need to be one of the longer ones though, 21 ft I
think, which not everyone around here has. That might be cost
prohibitive depending on how far you have to go. Otherwise, a flat car
hauler type trailer would probably work.
Rusty
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