Rotarians,
Does anyone have a good second gen single stage
turbo they want to sell?
Failing that - can someone recommend a good
supplier / rebuilder?
Yes, you guessed it - I flew for almost an hour
this morning, then fried the turbo. I'd noticed a bit of slack in the bearings, so was
expecting to have to rebuild it anyway - just not quite this
soon.
The good news is that the failure mode was fairly
benign. I was trying out the turbo at 5000ft and just passing through 170
kts making large circles over the field. The rpm dropped from about
the 4500 I was using to 3500 and no amount of throttle would increase it
from there. Below 3500 the engine ran almost normally, so I had enough power
to climb if needed. It was maybe a tad rough, but not so's you'd
notice. An observer says I put out a puff of white smoke, and was trailing a
small amout of white smoke as I headed back in for a normal landing. In all
I ran the engine for about 10 minutes after the turbo shaft broke. I lost
about 1 pint of oil and the same of coolant through the collapsed bearings,
so perhaps another 10 minutes or more would have been ok if the field had
been further. The exhaust wheel was floating around in the wastegate
housing, but too large to get through the hole, so all it did was block the
exhaust a bit.
I guess this is the "experimental" part of the
exercise. :)
John Slade
Rotary Cozy IV (currently sans
turbo)