Steve,

I removed the battery cable running to the starter, and using a spare battery, and a jumper cable for the ground, I cranked the starter with

this battery, which was isolated from the airplanes electrical system.
It had good spark on both rotors .... yeah !!!

How did you jumper the ground? Was it connected at the installed battery post or somewhere else in the circuit?
  

Have you tried isolating all electrical circuits except the starter, EC2 and coil power?
  

Bobby




-----Original Message-----
From: Rotary motors in aircraft [mailto:flyrotary@lancaironline.net] On Behalf Of Steve Brooks
Sent: Saturday, November 21, 2009 9:50 AM
To: Rotary motors in aircraft
Subject: [FlyRotary] Need a sanity check

I have been working on an issue for three weeks now, with very intermittent spark when cranking the engine.  Needless to say, it won't start either.
I have a spark plug out of each rotor, and have them clamped to a good

ground, so that I can see a spark on the front and rear rotor.
If i rotate the CAS by hand, or turn the prop by hand, I get good

When cranking with the starter, I get an initial spark, and then an occasional spark on the front or rear rotor.  Interesting, when I let off the starter, I get a couple of good sparks as it coasts to a stop.
Both controllers do the same thing BTW.

I had emailed Tracy, as at one time I thought that the EC-2 had an issue.  Tracy said that he had seen this symptom a couple of times before, and it is caused by noise from the starter interfering with the CAS signal.  He suggested that I install a 1K resistor across each

of the crank angle sensors.  I installed the resistors, but it did not

cure the problem.

This morning, determined to get to the bottom of this, I removed the battery cable running to the starter, and using a spare battery, and a

jumper cable for the ground, I cranked the starter with this battery, which was isolated from the airplanes electrical system.  It had good spark on both rotors .... yeah !!!

So then, I decided to reroute the starter cable on the other side of the engine, which keeps it away from the other wiring.  I hooked it back up to the aircraft battery, crossed my fingers and cranked the

Same problem.   I thought that perhaps the noise was getting into the EC-2, so I put the spare battery in the back seat (pusher aircraft), and using some jumper clips, I hooked the EC-2 through a fuse to the isolated battery.  Same problem.

I had extended the CAS wiring when I replaced the engine, so I decided

to reroute the shielded CAS wiring, so that I could eliminate the unshielded wires, which were about 12" long.  Same problem.

I am struggling with what to try next.  This problem started before I swapped the engine, as it was very hard to get started, though for three years prior to that, I had no issues, and it started easily.

Has anyone else seen this type of problem, or have any suggestions ?

Steve Brooks
Cozy MKIV 13BT


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