An interesting thing happened.....

[Hawkeye7A]

...on my way home from LOE. First off, let me say thanx to all the old friends and aquaintances and the new ones that once again made LOE the best fly-in of the year. We headed out in my '59 C172 spam can late Sunday morning like a lot of others doing a bit of scuddin' and things were getting clearer west of Deming just like the briefer said it would and Cathy and I were just a couple miles North of Benson, AZ(E95) decending through 7K preparing to let down in Tucson(TUS) to let her out to drive home. I did another scan of the instruments and my oil pressure and oil temp were falling rapidly. In fact, they were about at the lower peg before I could react! At first I thought maybe the instrument feed(voltage) went bad, but nothing else was affected. "$#!^" I said and then informed Cathy to tighten up her belt because I had to put her down at Benson. My next thought was that there's no way I can afford a new engine with all that I've put into the RV-7A I'm building that WILL fly next year. I was 3K+ AGL so I pulled the mixture, killed the mags, turned off the fuel, made another call to the CTAF with the "E" word included and circled the airport once while descending at 1500 fpm and about 110-120 IAS, turned off the master, made my approach on Rwy 28 and pulled a greaser, all the while the prop is windmilling and it didn't stop until the plane was almost done rolling. BTW, I had just enough momentum to roll off the active onto a taxiway. Then we had to pull/push it to the parking ramp. Turns out my spin-on oil filter adapter had come loose from the accessory case and dumped most of the oil overboard. Near as I can tell there was no damage to the engine. It still turns easily by hand. I called my primary instructor this morning and told him thanks for the engine out training he had given me almost 5 years ago. It must've stuck! Never really did have time to get nervous and somebody was obviously watching over us. It could've happened earlier over some much more desolate areas. Ain't no atheists in a cockpit.

[Rosie]

An interesting thing happened....how about, "An unexpected thing happened!"

I'm VERY glad you and Cathy are both SAFE Hawkeye! You did getting that plane down immediately.

Heading home from LOE, we passed just north of Benson, and honestly, I thought of you as you mentioned it over the weekend. I had no idea where it was but do now Rosie

[dan]

Hawk,

Nice job keeping your cool and making good of a really bad situation. Glad you guys are safe & sound.

[Paul Tuttle]

Good job!!! I had an engine failure one time and ended up in a farmers field. Everything went textbook but I remember thinking after the landing , I wonder if this farmer has a nasty German shepard that might not like some stranger from the heavens walking across the field toward the house.
Happily I survived with my Levi's intact.

RV 8 Fuselage

[MrNomad]

Glad you made it down safely. That's the most important factor but just because the engine turns freely does not mean that damage was not suffered.

Take note of the engine oil pressure in cold and hot conditions and compare present readings to those conditions you experienced earlier. If it's lower, that's not good. But the only accurate way (I know of) to know if damage was suffered by the crank bearings is to measure with plastigage which requires a lot of disassembly.

Copied from a website: "Check bearing clearances the modern, fast, accurate way with Hastings Plastigage. Plastigage is a special extruded plastic thread with accurately controlled "crush" properties. Extremely handy for checking main and connecting rod bearing clearances, oil pump cover-to-gear clearances, and for many other clearance checks."

I use this stuff when I build car engines.

The flip side is more encouraging. Usually, there is enough oil residue left on surfaces to keep the parts separated. I've seen many cars get an oil change at the pump (in other words, no oil) and keep on going.

Watch oil pressure carefully so the next engine out is not preceded with a big bang.

[prporter]

Hey Hawk,

I didn't get a chance to say adios to you and Cathy before Connor and I left, but we saw her and Rosie right before they took off on 22. You two are a cute couple!

On my first XC solo, I had my engine quit on me 3 miles from the airport. Talk about trial by fire!

Thanks to the CA RV group for adopting us for the weekend, and Moose, too. Connor said it was the most fun trip he has ever been on. Hopefully this will continue to fan the aviation fire I am trying to set in him!

[mgomez]

Well done! I hope I do as well if it ever happens to me. (And I hope it happens near a runway!) I will be double-checking under the cowling more thoroughly now during preflights!

Thanks for passing on the lesson learned.

Cheers,
Martin

[frankh]

Hats off to ya my firend, Great bit of flying.

Personally I'd be tempted to strip the engine but then again that decision would be heavily biased towards me doing it in my shop.

Cheers

Frank

[N62XS]

Your title choice for the thread says it all, INTERESTING! Man oh Man. I can think of a lot of words to describe your flight, but if you consider it interesting, you should change from Hawkeye7A to CoolHand7A. Hats off to you and hope the engine runs as well as you did. Good luck.

[Ironflight]

I've been in the same spot with a broken oil line on my Grumman a few years back....it definitely gets your attention!

Sounds like you did a textbook job - Outstanding!

Paul