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Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 23:48:04 -0500
From: David Staten <Dastaten@earthlink.net>
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To: Rotary motors in aircraft <flyrotary@lancaironline.net>
Subject: Progress on the rebuild (Update Sept 30)
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Ok gang...
    After over 5 weeks of waiting on various suppliers, my micrometers 
arrived on my doorstep Monday - four Outside "mitutoyu" style micros 
covering 0-4". Yay. Had a family member in the ER for a few hours since 
then, and didn't rightfully have a chance to mess with things until this 
evening. I took the time to mic. and scope gauge/mic all the applicable 
parts of the rotors, bearings and housings and jotted my numbers down. 
Observations included the following...
 
1) the Eshaft is at maximum allowable dimensions with regards to 
diameters. I am interpreting that as "like new, no measurable wear". It 
appears true and straight.
 
2) I may have introduced some error into my measurements by using the 
telescoping gauges and then measuring those with mics... because my 
calculated clearances on 3 of the 4 bearings were a smidgen under the 
minimum allowable of 0.0016, and there were (or should I say HAS BEEN)  
NO signs of abnormal wear on the babbit that you would expect with a 
tight journal bearing.

3) the side housing face wear was a fraction (1/4) of the allowable 
amount... not new.. but clearly not excessive.Clearly visible wear marks 
where they should be, but the numbers arent bad at all.

For those of you who missed the original story, this is the 1st of a 
batch of 3 (three) 2nd gen 13B turbo II cores we bid on, from Ebay, and 
won for $710. We then spent another 80 bucks max on gas for a road trip 
and had the engines home within 24 hours. I had made statements to Chris 
that visually, the first engine looked like a good rebuild candidate, I 
just didn't have the proper measuring tools to prove it. Now that I do, 
I am VERY pleased at the prospect of having a rebuilt engine that truly 
is near LIKE NEW tolerances.  And I haven't even knocked the dust off 
the other two cores/engines yet.
 
Chris Barber, the airframe builder, and our mutual friend Russell, came 
by the house today after our first "boys night out" together in quite a 
few weeks and showed Chris my handiwork... the workbench, the tools, the 
sand blasting booth that I threw together. He had seen inside an earlier 
engine we had elected to return, and he marvelled at the end product I 
had laying in pieces.
 
I intend to go back over my measurements (remeasure) my bearing min 
diameters tomorrow as I am quite exhausted today/tonight and may simply 
have some error using the telescoping gauges. Next step after that is to 
get the rebuild kit and begin the process of putting this jigsaw puzzle 
back together for good. I currently am awaiting arrival of some street 
porting templates, and need to go by Chris's to grab a junk engine core 
over there to practice on before I try to port out this first clean 
engine. Then time to start planning/shopping for intake/injector/turbo 
components. This end is hopefully starting to come together after much 
too long a delay.
 
My question for the masses.. with regards to piping and tubing, what are 
the recommendations? Automotive or aviation flaring tools for flared 
fittings (pro-con on this one)? Firesleeve or braided? or firesleeve 
over braid? Welded, tapped or clamped fittings/hoses for the various 
plumbing?
 
Dave Staten
13B turbo II rebuild
Velocity N17010 (reserved)