Guys ,
I took another early morning flight this morning with calm winds
and fair visibility I decided to fly a triangle with 70 mile legs and
work on my precision in flight as well as becoming more comfortable with
operation of all the gadgets in the panel. The flight was great, smooth
as can be and I managed to keep the plane somewhere between the sky and
the ground or 1.6 hours. The landings were quite a challenge for some
reason today as I could not seem to get her down and ground effect went
forever resulting in 2 go arounds.
Anyway when I got back to the hanger I saw an awful lot of oil on
the bottom, so I pulled the cowl and started looking around. The oil was
all on the co pilot side in the cowl bottom but I didn't see anything
obvious. I decided to check the oil level just to see how much had been
lost. When I started to pull the dipstick The whole tube wiggled. Looked
down to where it enters the block and it was broke off flush with the
hole in the block. This is a new chromed chevy dipstick and tube that is
installed to copy the way Bill Clapp had done his That's to say it had
been bent in a large radius to point at the air inlet so oil could be
checked by pulling the dipstick through the air inlet without needing an
access door or removing the cowl. There was only 1 support bracket near
the top of the tube on my installation.
I think that anyone that has done something similar should check
it. I am certain that there was a little movement in mine in every
direction and it work hardened at the base. This is going to be a son of
a B.....
to fix.
N357CJ-- 28.5 hours and holding
Joe Horton, Coopersburg, PA.
joe.kr2s.buil...@juno.com
