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As y'all may remember, I have had some, uh, "issues" with my rotary. After seemingly toasting my first rebuilt rotary from lack of knowledge and the learning curve, I gathered my newly learned skill and bit the bullet and bought new end, center and rotor housings from Mazdatrix and built what was essentially a new 2nd gen 13b.
I was all excited and got it to start with little problem and had learned a great deal about most my systems and was very confidant in the new build. DOH! After getting everything back together it started to exhibit some of the same symptoms of the first engine (I had discovered coolant leaking into the rotor housing of the first engine, which had been built from the parts of three 2nd gen turbo's we found as a lot on ebay), namely, the engine would start up fine at first, but would become very difficult to start after the first start of the day.
Since I recognized the symptoms, I reluctantly pulled out a spark plug and hand turned the prop and low and behold, coolant squirted out the spark plug hole. Damn-it. I was at a loss, so, I removed the engine from my Velocity and took it over to a trusted friend (who is building an RV-7a with a Eggenfielder Soob) and engineer to get a second, and as it turned out a third opinion on what was going on (my friend had a friend over who is a 30 year veteran Audie mechanic). Upon inspection it seemed as if the problem was that the coolant ports that feed into the stock intake had not been properly sealed. Eureka, or so we thought, we had solved the problem with both the new engine and the old one. We thought the coolant was coming into the rotor housings via the bad seal and the Mistal intake not sealing as expected. What a relief......wrong.
Over the last couple of months, since the engine was off the plane I refined many of the firewall aft systems and added both a much bigger radiator and oil cooler. Really got things much more flight ready as opposed to "proof of concept". The old radiator was not up to the task in Houston's heat, so I got one on there much closer to the size of John Slade as opposed to Tracy's original size, that, IIRC, was marginal at best. It was for me anyway.
So, last week I had most my systems installed and got the engine all rigged. I rolled the plane out of the hangar for an attempt to start. It started right up and was even admired by some neighbors, including the married NASA rocket scientist next door (great couple) who had just spent $60K for a new certified engine for their Lancair Legacy. I was feeling like I was actually making progress. Alas, I was mistaken. The engine was shut down to allow a plane to pass returning to its hangar. Upon restart it was more difficult. I let it run a few minutes to check cooling, which seems better (coolant doing better than oil). I then shut it down again and restarted, even harder this time....lets try again....even harder. Hmmmmmm. Okay, I have seen this, no reason to wait. Let me pull the plug. Yep, as I hand propped the engine, I got coolant squirting out the lower rear spark plug hole.
I have lost some of my patience, so I stripped most everything off the engine over the last few days. Today I mounted the engine on the stand and cracked it open. Everything looked fine, UNTIL I got to the intermediate/center plate. There was a piece of the center iron inner water seal O-ring wall that was missing!!! (see attached photo) This is a brand new housing purchased and ported by Mazdatrix last summer.....brand new. On one hand I am horrified at my new plate failing after only about an hour of running. On the other hand I am happy that I did not screw up the build. There is no way I can grasp that I made this happen, thus my build was solid. A part that does not usually fail, failed. Now, I wonder what Mazdatrix's return policy is.....will it be covered under warranty? It is a $500.00 piece purchased in the last year (kinda long, but I admittedly do not have the luxury of testing every day and it only has about 1-2 hours total time on it) that should not have failed. I will call them tomorrow, but regret I do not have much faith in them accepting responsibility. That being said, I know it was not anything I did. I will likely purchase another plate, send them my damaged one and hope for the best...I want to move on. I am sick and tired of messing with it....I feel like I have been going in circles....so, so close, but so far. I think I would have been flying if it were not for this issue....however, it has allowed me to make my systems much better during the experience.
Please check out the picture and ad any thoughts you may have.
Thanks.
All the best,
Chris Barber
Houston
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