FYI: Subject: CorvAircraft> another broken crank-?
> Sometime just after noon today (Saturday, May 20), my hangar mate Randy > Stout's 601 ZenVair went down in an oat field near Temple, TX. Everyone is > OK and only minor damage to the plane. Randy was on his way to the Zenith > open house in Mexico, MO with his wife and dog. > > At cruise, Randy began to notice a vibration from the engine. He spotted a > good field and set up for it, the engine began to vibrate a bit more so he > shut everything off and secured the engine. Everything went normally but a > bit too much float in the flare started to worry him about running out of > oat field so he dropped the nose and put the airplane down. That bit of > diving, rather than holding the nose off a bit longer, caused the nosewheel > pant to crack but it was not the final version of wheelpant that he wanted > anyway. > > Just minutes ago, Randy and his wife and dog were picked up from the > sheriff's office by his brother in law and they are on their way back home. > Early tomorrow morning a retrieval party from EAA Chapter 35 is headed up > with a trailer and tools to pull the wings off the airplane and bring it > back to San Geronimo. > > Randy had not nitrided his crank. He had bought a spare crank from me a few > weeks ago and it is at the machine shop right now, being prepared (it passed > magnaflux and was being polished and cleaned). Once it was ready and the > machine work was done, he was going to send it off to Nitron, then when he > got it back he was going to do the crank swap all in one work session. > Looks like he'll be accelerating the process. Hope there isn't any damage > to the cases. Teardown to follow, including a determination of whether or > not it was indeed a crank break but it sounds a lot like what Langford > experienced and described. Randy had put quite a few hours on his 601. > > News as it becomes available... > > Oscar Zuniga > San Antonio, TX > mailto: taildr...@hotmail.com > website at http://www.flysquirrel.net > > > > _________________________________________________________ > search the CorvAircraft archives at http://www.maddyhome.com/corvairsrch/index.jsp > to UNsubscribe from CorvAircraft, send a message to corvaircraft-le...@mylist.net > Other CorvAircraft list info is at http://www.krnet.org/corvaircraft_inst.html >
