Went to the hangar early this afternoon (hey, it was my day off...I lounged around a bit this am and watched Flyboys from PPV....mediocre, but lots of plane stuff) and took off the revisited every orifice, recapped and sealed every potential for leaks. I found two that were probable the cuprits. I also ground down some old screw points on the top of the engine to allow a much more natural lay for the Mistral runners.
Got in, and started the engine. It was a bit tough, but if finally caught AND it was running COMPLETLY differently. I was able to have it run all the way down to 400 RPM.....however it runs like.....uh, poorly this low. The engine was surging and running very rough even when I increased the throttle, then I remembered that I had started to tune it with the higher RPM's. So, I reset the ECU, actually, I figured to do this just after it started and it actually started after only a short rest (as of now, it really has not liked to start for a while once it is shut down).
It was runny rough, but I got it into autotune mode and things started to smooth out. I had it running about 15 minutes at lower RPM and began to worry about temps since it has been an issue. I took it out of autotune mode and the H2O temp was 158 and the oil was around 173.....MUCH BETTER.
As we mentioned, we have a leak in the PSRU, which seems to be getting worse, so I didn't want to run it too much 'till we figure the leak out. I wanted to start it for an EAA sister chapter (EAA 712) meeting at my hangar tonight. So I cleaned the hangar a bit. When the EAA chapter arrived and I had an audiance the thing would not start. Of course. The injectors firing at 3000 in Mode Zero reared its head again and I am guessing it flooded the engine.
So, even though it would not start this evening I consider it a good day as we seemed to get the rpms down. Now to investigate the PSRU issue as well as get this thing running more smothly again. Just one more step.
All the best,
Chris
Cross posted in Flyrotary