Hi Tracy,
Back from a wet week in Cumberland, Kentucky
visiting ancestral home place with my sister. Very interesting trip –
ended up finding a copy of my paternal grandparents marriage license including
a note from the grooms mother and from the brides father permission to marry as
they were both under 21 years old. Apparently my grandmother was the only
one who could sign her name as the others had their “Mark”.
But, back to today. Yes, the oil
leak I had just blew my mind because as Tracy
said it was accumulating on the back side of my cores up front. I highly
suspected the oil line running behind the rad cores because clearly the oil
would not be flowing “up wind”. Well, I was wrong (about the
source), the oil was coming from a dripping oil pan seal in the rear of the
engine and apparently following a circulation pattern of air under the cowl
that took it up to the top of the underside of the cowl and then to the front
of the engine compartment above the cores and there the flow through the cores
apparently “sucked” the oil down into that flow depositing some on
the back side of the core. Would have not believe it if it had not
happened.
Also Chris should make absolute certain he
has the correct hose in the “goes into” and the “goes out of”
ports of the remote oil filter. I had mine hooked up in reverse and no
oil would flow (fortunately I check for flow before firing up the
engine). However a rotary friend hooked his up in reverse and the oil
pressure managed to flow through the rubber check valve – so his engine
did get some oil – but not as intended.
So it’s possible it might not be the
oil mount. Wrapped a light colored towel around the oil filter and mount –
secure it with bungee cords/duct tape and fire up the engine for a few
second. IF the towel is soak with oil from the outside and not on the
inside then the oil is coming from elsewhere.
Ed
From: Rotary motors in aircraft [mailto:flyrotary@lancaironline.net]
On Behalf Of Tracy Crook
Sent: Sunday, September 20, 2009
9:03 AM
To: Rotary
motors in aircraft
Subject: [FlyRotary] Re: Another
mixed day / Cooling experiments
"It IS seeping from the filter seal and NOT the two hose
connections...no doubt on this. "
Just from observing many rotary installation 'de-bugings' over the years
(including my own) I noticed that difficult to solve problems are almost always
caused by false assumptions.
It is possible to get several bad filters or two bad filter mounts but the
mathematical odds are staggeringly small. You haven't offered your
test proofs as to why you know they are bad and leaking but if I were betting,
I'd put my money on something else. The assumptions about the wiring
might need examination as well.
This reminds me of an oil leak the Ed Anderson had. The oil was showing
up on the back side of one of his rads. There was an oil line running
very close (< 1" as I recall) to the rad so the assumption was made
that the oil line was leaking. Long story short, the oil leak was
actually coming from something at the opposite end of the engine. What
exactly was it Ed? It defied all logic in that it was not even close to
where it showed up and the oil was traveling against the assumed airflow under
the cowl.
Speaking of assumed airflow, my cooling experiments are blowing away all my own
assumptions. I kluged up the cowl flap I mentioned and fixed it in the
open position. The trailing edge of outlet is about 1 1/2 "
below where it was. The temperatures were down a little but not
near what I wanted. Only a little better than the big giant opening I
tried. At this point I was ready to conclude that the underside of the
airplane was bad place to put a cooling outlet. Keep
in mind that my working assumption is that the pressure under the cowl is too
high to allow good airflow through radiator and oil cooler. I had
installed a pressure probe under the cowl but forgot to look at the
reading. Figuring I might as well know how big a problem I had, I
made another flight to check the under cowl pressure. Duhh, almost
nothing! Checked the probe to make sure it was not blocked, pinched, etc,
and everything looked OK.
I need to check pressure in a few other spots to be sure about this.
There is something odd going on with airflow under the cowl but I'm back ti
head scratching mode again.
One builder on the RV list said he got a big improvement in cooling by
installing VGs on the trailing edge of the cooling outlet. This is so
non-intuitive that I can't imagine why it would work but its so easy to try I
might have to do it while scratching my head.
Tracy
.
On Sun, Sep 20, 2009 at 1:37 AM, Chris Barber <cbarber@bellairepolice.com>
wrote:
Made it out to the hangar for most the
day and decided to take the advice here and modify my start up routine based on
what was suggested here and in the manual. So, I cranked the mixture full
rich with no priming and it started up in a few blades. Ran for a while,
shut down and started back up with mixture in about the 2:00 oclock
position....and it started fine. Kewl.
The first bad news is that I replaced my romote oil filter
mount and installed a new filter. As I have mentioned here I have had it
leaking at the rubber filter seal. The old one looked ok, but since
replacing the filters no less than three times and knowing that the eye
cannot see all inperfections, I replaced the mount AND filter (K&N 2004 filter). But, NO JOY. It is still
leaking where the filter mounts. It IS seeping from the filter seal and
NOT the two hose connections...no doubt on this. I know the rotary's oil
pressure is higher than other engines but I would not think it would be so much
that it is overwhelming this standard mount and seal. This is just a
standard screw on remote oil mount made out of AL...Made in the USA. Looks like many others I
have seen. Y'all have any ideas.
Second good thing is a guy from a few hangars down turns
out to be a welder by trade. He came down as I was working on the new
stainless turbo exhaust manifold the other day after offering to help me modify
my manifold.. As was mentioned here before, the old cast iron manifold I
had wold work if mounted upside down. It puts the turbo lower (the oil
return being about 2 inches higher than the oil inlet return in the pan) to the
rear of the engine and it clears my aileron control link. I will have to
make a very small modification to the lower cowl to give me proper clearance
EXCEPT the wastegate interfeared with the Mistral intake fuel rail. So, I
ordered a stainless copy of the cast iron one I had, based on John Slades
suggestion. My welder friend said it would not be too big a job to turn
the wastgate extension around which should allow it to miss the fuel rail
completly. We looked at the options and he took the manifold with him
saying he would cut off the old wastgate extention and come back to fit the new
part on in a few days. Kewl.
The second bad news is that I was doing some continued tuning. I
even transferred A to B as B was a bit rough from the factory and it worked
fine. HOWEVER, later in the day, after feeling pretty good about the
lasted progress (excepting the continued leak) the engine stopped. Huh?
It will not restart. I checke the first fuel filter and it is
clear. I decided to start at the beginning and just run the EC2's
diagnostice test. Damn, no chattering of the injectors (even though I was
able to hear an individual click when I primed it). Put on a test
plug and wire and got no spark. All the other electrics are working fine.
I pulled my extra EC2 out and installed it and I got injector
clattering away and spark on three of the inectors. The secondary on
Rotor one did not seem to fire. Hmmmmm? I put on an extra injector
that I had and tried again, and it didn't fire...then fired for a few seconds
and then stopped. Looks like I have some more wire issues. Damn, I though
I had really gotten past most of those.
I am really confused about the EC2 seeming to just shut down. The
other electrical componants are all working, but the EC2 componants are
not. Strange since I thought each items (injectors and coils) had there
own power source thus should not shut down as a "team" like this.
Yes, it is the same on A and B. Currently I am very discouraged so I
stopped for the night and decided to crawl into bed with a hot blond and sulk
(she was actually gracious enough to hang out in the hangar with me for a few
hours...whata gal)....well, she helps me from sulking too much.....this dating
in my 40's ain't all that bad <g>
I anxiously wait commentary and possible explanations from y'all.
Upon my return to the hangar (today was MY Sunday) hopefully tomorrow
night after work I will be looking at my, apparntly piss poor, wiring.
As always my friends, Thanks.
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