NetHeads, I finished up my oil separator over the weekend. A photo of the final setup is at http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford/corvair/090113155m.jpg . The old one was fairly hideous, with safety wire holding the top on. And since it was fastened to the engine with rubber hose and hose clamps, that connection was getting fairly iffy, with only the cowling keeping it in place. This one screws on and seals with an o-ring, so it's not going anywhere. The top is a $1 sink drain from Home Depot, and it's filled with two baffles and some Briggs and Stratton air filter foam. I'll do a web page on it one of these days, but you get the idea. It works every bit as good as the old one, perfectly.
I flew it yesterday, and was reminded of something the EIS (Engine Information System) can do to rattle you. I'd had the sparkplugs out and when I put them back in one of the CHT probes (which I noticed wasn't looking that good) got a little twisted and frayed. That allowed one of the sparkplug thermocouple probe wires to short, which makes the EIS a little crazy. I was climbing out and the EIS alarm went off. I glanced over to see my oil pressure at 62 psi, but then all of the numbers were whacky too, and after a few seconds everything went back to normal. End of problem, until it did it again a few minutes later, but this time the voltage was reading 16.7 volts. Again, that lasted for just a few seconds, and then back to normal. A review of the other numbers indicates that CHTs, EGTs, oil pressure, and voltage are the ones that are affected. Last time this happened I was afraid it was an alternator spike problem, but proved it wasn't so by flying with a Fluke meter connected to the bus. GRT told me to check thermocouples, and sure enough, a new one fixed it. So it's time for another one, and it's a good thing I keep a spare around. One other thing that I'd warn people about is setting alarms on the EIS for first flights. Be sure you have some idea of what realistic numbers are for the alarms. The last thing you want is to lift off the runway and have a bright red light in your face and an alarm in your headset. Mine did exactly that the first time Troy Petteway flew it, but he wasn't distracted by it. The cause on mine was an internal termperature reference problem that made temperatures read way too high when the unit go hot. They fixed it for free, but that kind of thing can rattle you on a first flight, or any other time, for that matter... Mark Langford N56ML "at" hiwaay.net website at http://www.N56ML.com --------------------------------------------------------
