Fuel Leak found, missing plug!

[Rupester]

Good on ya, for the post! Never hurts to check another detail before going airborne.

Against many recommendations, I did ground runs and taxi tests totaling 1.4 hrs before my first flight, to assure that ALL the engine controls, idle adjustments, etc worked before that first flight ... and more than anything else, to check for fluid leaks of any kind. Engine "lore" said that much low speed operation risked glazing the cylinders on the new IO-320, but I simply would not make that first flight w/o some confidence in the integrity of the FFW systems and engine operation. And yes, I DID find some small fluid leaks, though the defective and eventually-leaky Red Cube (that vexed me for a month!) didn't show up until about 7 hrs.

[aerhed]

I gotta say this. It was a really dumb thing to do. Welcome to the club. I've been doing this for a long time and on the last 10 I hooked up a really nice drain line for the manifold valve and since the gage port had a flare fitting on it I just screwed it on there. It sat there in plain sight for months until I did one last scan before first engine run. My eye finally noticed that the drain fitting was in the same plane as the injector lines. I blinked at it as I realized the 'duh' gene was alive and well and still an integral part of me. Took about 2 minutes to swap ports.

[KleensRV6]

[quote=Tom Martin;756530]Thank you to the original poster of this thread. It points out a problem with our experimental aircraft. Although we have good building instructions for the kit itself, the firewall forward area is weak in terms of documentation. There are so many different engine combinations that could be used that it would be very difficult to come up with a comprehensive all inclusive instruction sheet. This is why I promote hiring a professional aircraft mechanic to check your work. A leak check of the fuel system is a pretty common practice in the certified world after any work has been done to the fuel system.

An extra set of experienced eyes are well worth the price. I had the good fortune of Bill Marvel assisting in our build. He recommended a bottle check of the IO system...okay, four same size glass bottles taped to the cylinder heads with injection lines in each bottle, 30 seconds on the boost pump. There you have it or in some locals, Bob's your uncle. Place your bottles next to each other to confirm an even flow to each cylinder. Never would have been aware of the test without Bill's assistance.

[ILikePike]

I just took that fitting out out of the flow divider and installed the plug removed to install the oil pressure fitting. The fitting removed from the flow divider looks like a nice little restrictor fitting that will work perfect for the manifold pressure take off on the lower back of the #3 cylinder. The fitting provided in the Vans manifold pressure kit was not a restrictor fitting and it was aluminum. Anybody see an issue with using the removed restrictor fitting?