Folks,

Here's the follow-up on my cotton patch experience.

In the first picture you can see how close I came to the trees at the end of the field (50 Ft). Also notice I landed in the field with the Pecan VOR, which is behind the plane. It made it easier for folks to find me when I was on the ground.

The second picture is the piston top from the #1 cylinder. The exhaust valve broke off and did the damage. It appears that most of the valve and debris exited through the exhaust. The valve had overheated causing the breakage. Once the valve head had punched a hole through the piston some of the aluminum debris was pushed into the crankcase. But before that, the aluminum was getting into the intake manifold. A lot of flakes of aluminum were found in the manifold. These made it to the other 3 cylinders, in one case fouling the plug. The other 2 cylinders had the debris lower the compression, by messing up the seats of the other valves. Therefore I was a glider.

The reason for the overheating was that the baffling had become worn over the years. Especially worn around the exhaust of the # 1 cylinder. On the last annual, he had purchased some new baffling material but had not gotten around to replacing all of it. So it jumped up and bit me on my first solo cross country. ;-) Murphy at his best! The lesson here is be careful not to take something as mundane as the baffling for granted. This stuff is NOT install and forget.

The good news from all of this, We are back in the air! There was no damage to the plane, until we removed it from the field. I cracked the windscreen taking out one of the strut bolts. The owner had a new Continental cylinder/piston he purchased 17 years earlier. The rest was repaired by an engine man. He found one of the other cylinders had a crack around it's exhaust valve guide and replaced the cylinder. Did a complete overhaul of the other 2 cylinders, magnafluxed everything, etc. Gave us the gasket sets and did an excellent job for $950.00. WOW!!  Mack (the owner and A/P) and I put everything back together, replaced the baffling and some other lingering todos. Then test flew it on Monday. We needed to trim the left wing up just a little. The engine runs great!

Be careful out here folks!

Bob Tilley

Albany, Ga