Mark, I don't have experience with Corvair's but I do have significant experience with VW's. In VW's, this malady is usually caused by misalignment between the cam and the crank. They MUST be in as perfect parallel as possible, both vertical and horizontal. You may solve this issue by line boring one or both. Your broken crank may have enlarged a bearing saddle. Also gear mesh is critical. If to far apart it will allow slop and the wear/stress will be at weakest/thinnest part of the teeth. if to close it will cause excessive wear on the gear teeth and eventual breakage. I've built several hundred stock and high performance VW's over the years and this usually showed up in high performance engines because of the additional stress. Please notice I say these things may have been the cause and not absolutely the cause. Too many variables and I am not an expert. If it were my engine I would find a competent shop that understands this and have them check the case.
John El Paso In a message dated 8/28/2009 1:48:00 P.M. Mountain Daylight Time, flyk...@charter.net writes: This past Wednesday, N886MJ experienced yet another engine failure resulting in another dead stick landing which turned out good since I was again able to glide safely back to the airport. The cam gear failed. I experienced the exact failure of the cam gear as I did Last November 1st. The only difference this time was that this one lasted 44 hours vs the 4.5 hour life of the first cam gear failure. Now for all you Corvair guys, don't go and get all hot and bothered about this as we suspect this is inherent to my engine only. Remember I had a crankshaft breakage just prior to the first cam gear failure which possibly could have damaged the case in a way that would allow the cam or crank to oscillate in an unnatural way that did not show up on tolerance checks.. We did replace the crankshaft, camshaft and both gears on both rebuilds. On this last rebuild everything was meticulously built, checked and rechecked. I will keep everyone informed to any findings as we tear down and rebuild. The sad part is that I was leaving for the KR Gathering on Sept 17th with some new tail art which I was looking forward to everyone seeing and enjoying. I simply can not wait another year for all of you to see it so here is a link. Hope you enjoy it: http://flykr2s.com/photo.html Mark Jones (N886MJ) Stevens Point, WI E-mail: flyk...@charter.net Web: www.flykr2s.com _______________________________________ Search the KRnet Archives at http://www.maddyhome.com/krsrch/index.jsp to UNsubscribe from KRnet, send a message to krnet-le...@mylist.net please see other KRnet info at http://www.krnet.org/info.html
