flyrotary@lancaironline.net Mailing List Archive

Thats not funny Ed - thats exactly where I'm at now. Everything is working pretty well and I'm walking around on eggshells with fingers and toes crossed hoping all the bad stuff is behind me. One of the frustrating things is looking back over the past year and trying to recall out of all of the red herrings I chased, which ones actually made a difference. From day one my engine ran great above about 2800 RPM. It was the low power settings that gave me trouble. These are the things I changed that did make a difference that I recall: 1) Adding a small "capacity" to the MAP sensor inputs. Dave Leonard recommended this to me and it helped damp out oscillations. 2) Moving the staging point up. Related to this is very fine tuning of the MAP table locations that straddle the staging point to minimize the stumble that was occuring as I transitioned from 2 to 4 injectors and back. 3) My engine would not run well at these low power settings with the default program. Tracy is correct in that trying to program the EC2 actually made it worse. The problem isnt programming the EC2, its programming the EC2 blindly without knowing what's in the MAP table. Installing Ed's EFISM solved this and was the single best thing I did to get things working well. Too bad I procrastinated for 6 months before finally doing it. 4) Reseating the improperly seated B controller in the EC2. This never caused the engine to run poorly, but occasionally caused the engine to not run at all. Which was not particularly confidence inspiring (and one of the reasons that I still dont entirely trust the airplane). 5) Sending my EC-2 back to Tracy for update. Lots of changes and improvements occured in the 5 years between when I bought it and when the engine first ran. A couple of things I wasted a lot of time on that did not actually make any performance difference: 1) Chasing phantom vacuum leaks. If the engine isnt running correctly your MAP/vacuum gauge will likely read incorrectly. Is this the cause of the problem or just a symptom? I spent a lot of time looking for the vacuum leak that the gauge appeared to indicate, but it didnt exist. 2) Chasing electrical noise. I spent a lot of time chasing what in hindsight appears to have been a non-existant problem. I made a couple of wiring changes that simplified my installation a little but had no detectable effect on performance. 3) EC2 tuning blindly relying on a MAP gauge, EGTs, and O2 sensor. See #3 above. Off to the airport to fly and see if my landing gear shimmy is cured after installing gear leg stiffeners. Mike Wills RV-4 N144MW ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ed Anderson" <eanderson@carolina.rr.com> To: "Rotary motors in aircraft" <flyrotary@lancaironline.net> Sent: Sunday, August 23, 2009 6:03 AM Subject: [FlyRotary] Re: Progress Report: Velocity N17010 Well, Chris, the rotary deities apparently decided you have suffered long enough. Congratulations, I know the feeling - almost like - well, Magic. Then there is the anxiety waiting for the other shoe to drop {:>) - just kidding. Sounds like you should just start the engine once a day to keep the motivation high. Congratulations for hanging in there Ed Ed Anderson Rv-6A N494BW Rotary Powered Matthews, NC eanderson@carolina.rr.com http://www.andersonee.com http://www.dmack.net/mazda/index.html http://www.flyrotary.com/ http://members.cox.net/rogersda/rotary/configs.htm#N494BW http://www.rotaryaviation.com/Rotorhead%20Truth.htm -----Original Message----- From: Rotary motors in aircraft [mailto:flyrotary@lancaironline.net] On Behalf Of Christopher Barber Sent: Saturday, August 22, 2009 8:58 PM To: Rotary motors in aircraft Subject: [FlyRotary] Progress Report: Velocity N17010 Tracy et al, WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ME!!!! I am not quite sure how to act. In the last chapter of the continuing saga I informed all of the broken ground wire to my ECU. How I had to send the unit back and how I not only scrambled the brains of the EC2 but also of the EM2. While you had it I received the fuel pumps from RWS that had been back ordered to replace the noisy MGS(?) pumps with push on hose connections <yikes>. I installed the new pumps and much better plumbing to them a couple of weeks ago while waiting for the electronics to return. Well, I got my electronics back and installed them all back in the plane day before yesterday......NOW, here is the scary part. I turned on everything, placed the mixture in the middle, gave two shots of primer, hit the start switch......AND IT STARTED.....IN LESS THAN ONE BLADE.....kinda like, uh, well...a car engine <g>. No hesitation. Fired up and ran strong, clean and consistent through all power settings. Who would of thunk it?????? Again,I am not quite sure how to act. I may have to start working on other parts of the airplane and support systems.. Did ya put some voodoo magic in the boxes this time? Also, the new pumps are significantly more quite....just an added perk. OAT today was 100 + and my temps stayed good. I added two four inch fans under my oil cooler to pull air through which is helping keep the oil temps lower longer. The coolant temp has not been an issue at lower power settings since I installed the larger radiator/heat exchanger. Oil is still running over coolant but I can let the engine sit on the ramp (where an electronic thermostat sitting on the strake read 132 degrees) at a moderate idle all day long and not worry about it. Oh, yes, I rewired the ground wire that broke and am confidant (ok, confidant with fingers crossed) with the current install. Go figure. All the best, Chris Barber Houston -- Homepage: http://www.flyrotary.com/ Archive and UnSub: http://mail.lancaironline.net:81/lists/flyrotary/List.html __________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 3267 (20080714) __________ The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. http://www.eset.com __________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 3267 (20080714) __________ The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. http://www.eset.com -- Homepage: http://www.flyrotary.com/ Archive and UnSub: http://mail.lancaironline.net:81/lists/flyrotary/List.html