I am feeling very thankful for all the wonderful people my wife and I met on our trip from Washington state to Southern California and back last week in our RV-9A.
1st hop was Kelso to Cameron Park CA. Stopped by to see Mike Starkey's RV-10 project. Mike escorted us from the runway to his home and parked our RV9A outside his house. What a great time we had talking with Mike and taking him out to a wonderful Mexican lunch. He introduced us to a neighbor of his who also has a place near ours at Sunriver. Had a great chat.
As we were leaving I noticed the tinnerman washers on the front bulkhead of my spinner were charred and broken. Not good.
Mike took me into his shop and supplied me with new ones and a Torx screw driver to replace them.
Decided to fly on down to Caliveras county airport and show the problem to Craig Caito who built the prop and spinner for me. Craig was not on the field, but I talked to Andrew Turpen at Bud Field Aviation. It was just about quitting time, but he and two other fellows worked with me to pull the spinner and re-torque the prop bolts. We ended up spending about an hour and the wouldn't take anything for it but a little beer money! Really nice people and good gas prices too!
Next leg was to Fullerton CA. (KFUL)
My O-320 seemed to run a little rough intermittently as we flew. Cycled the mag/EI off and on, fiddled with the mixture, but couldn't seem to get a handle on it.
Coming in on final to KFUL it started running really rough!
Landed about 8:30 PM. Taxied over to AFI where I had arranged for a rental car, but they closed at 7:00 PM. Door was unlocked, so we went in and found a young fellow out in the hanger that got us hooked up with our car.
I was really bumbed out about the engine. Only 500 hours on it since total overhaul by Bart at Aeosport Power.
Ignition??? Carb/mixture???? 1000 miles from home with a real problem.
Didn't sleep too well that night trying to figure out what to do.
Next morning drove back to AFI and talked to Larry, their A/P guy. Larry said, "I am not supposed to work on other folks airplanes, but you can use my tools and I will tell you how to trouble shoot the mags.
We stepped through his process. -Not the mags.
Next I pulled the lower plugs and cleaned and gapped them. Larry had me hold my thumb over the spark plug hole and turn the prop to build up pressure in each cylinder, then release my thumb and blow out any lead that might be built up.
To be continued
1st hop was Kelso to Cameron Park CA. Stopped by to see Mike Starkey's RV-10 project. Mike escorted us from the runway to his home and parked our RV9A outside his house. What a great time we had talking with Mike and taking him out to a wonderful Mexican lunch. He introduced us to a neighbor of his who also has a place near ours at Sunriver. Had a great chat.
As we were leaving I noticed the tinnerman washers on the front bulkhead of my spinner were charred and broken. Not good.
Mike took me into his shop and supplied me with new ones and a Torx screw driver to replace them.
Decided to fly on down to Caliveras county airport and show the problem to Craig Caito who built the prop and spinner for me. Craig was not on the field, but I talked to Andrew Turpen at Bud Field Aviation. It was just about quitting time, but he and two other fellows worked with me to pull the spinner and re-torque the prop bolts. We ended up spending about an hour and the wouldn't take anything for it but a little beer money! Really nice people and good gas prices too!
Next leg was to Fullerton CA. (KFUL)
My O-320 seemed to run a little rough intermittently as we flew. Cycled the mag/EI off and on, fiddled with the mixture, but couldn't seem to get a handle on it.
Coming in on final to KFUL it started running really rough!
Landed about 8:30 PM. Taxied over to AFI where I had arranged for a rental car, but they closed at 7:00 PM. Door was unlocked, so we went in and found a young fellow out in the hanger that got us hooked up with our car.
I was really bumbed out about the engine. Only 500 hours on it since total overhaul by Bart at Aeosport Power.
Ignition??? Carb/mixture???? 1000 miles from home with a real problem.
Didn't sleep too well that night trying to figure out what to do.
Next morning drove back to AFI and talked to Larry, their A/P guy. Larry said, "I am not supposed to work on other folks airplanes, but you can use my tools and I will tell you how to trouble shoot the mags.
We stepped through his process. -Not the mags.
Next I pulled the lower plugs and cleaned and gapped them. Larry had me hold my thumb over the spark plug hole and turn the prop to build up pressure in each cylinder, then release my thumb and blow out any lead that might be built up.
To be continued