Who me? > "With much less oil to troubleshoot I now suspect a loose nut on the right rear pushrod flange."
"Sparky" Sparkes recently re-did the heads on his R-2100D and went for a test flight. He needs to jump in and tell us exactly what happened since I sometimes get things wrong. I heard about what happened from someone who was working on their car when from overhead a huge racket suddenly erupted. This person is a pilot and knows Sparky and since he's a mechanic he also knew that the sounds coming from the KR overhead were not good. Word got around quickly. Sparky stayed close enough to the field (KSEE) to make the runway in case something wasn't right following the top overhaul. He was just starting to feel confident that he had put the engine back together correctly when it happened - a loose nut got caught between the exhaust valve and the seat and it was all downhill from there. Sparky said he came up short one nut when buttoning up the engine, so he found a replacement nut and finished the job. The missing nut stayed in the cylinder long enough to get in the air and fly around a bit, but then it showed up - fortunately within gliding distance of the runway. The engine continued to run on three cylinders, making a huge racket. There's more to this story - the answer as to why the nut didn't just pass on through the exhaust, but I can't recall why it didn't. The moral of this story is to be very curious about the whereabouts of any missing fasteners or other small parts when putting an engine back together. If the missing nut had showed up just after liftoff there would have been a different end to this story. Maybe Sparky will chime in with some better detail . . . . Mike Stirewalt KSEE ____________________________________________________________ One Trick to Catch a Liar The Beacon http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3141/59233c2aa20813c2a60d8st03vuc _______________________________________________ Search the KRnet Archives at https://www.mail-archive.com/krnet@list.krnet.org/. Please see LIST RULES and KRnet info at http://www.krnet.org/info.html. see http://list.krnet.org/mailman/listinfo/krnet_list.krnet.org to change options. To UNsubscribe from KRnet, send a message to krnet-le...@list.krnet.org
