bill.hutchison
Well Known Member
Please forgive the basic nature of many of my questions - I am new to this (Ownership and troubleshooting) and will probably make 101-level stuff look like graduate school. On with the schooling...
While flying my new-to-me RV6A to VA from TX I got an annunciator for low fuel pressure. The previous(er) owner had the limits set to alarm when the pressure would go below 2.4psi, it seems.
I turned on the boost pump, and the pressure came back up to around 5.8 PSI. I turned the boost pump off and it crept back down to around 2.4 or so. This became repeatable so I took a video of it.
I got some videos of this behavior. Trying to figure out how to share.
If I turned the boost pump on, it would come back up.
After a while, at cruise, leaned out properly, the fluctuations would stop and the pressure would be pretty consistent. For the rest of the flight, there weren't any issues.
Next day, similar behavior - around 10-15 minutes of flight time, climbing to altitude and leveling off, this would go on for a little while, and eventually stop.
No roughness from engine, EGTs/CHTs all in normal ranges, airplane flew just fine.
I called the previous owner and mentioned it - he says he has had that happen before, but that it stabilizes on level off and leaning operations for cruise.
Okay - so we have some consistent behavior. What I'm wondering is:
1) Why
2) Is this something I need to worry about
3) If the answer to 2 is yes, how I go about the analysis and troubleshooting.
Any thoughts, guidance and ruler-slapping-my-wrist for stupidity would be appreciated.
While flying my new-to-me RV6A to VA from TX I got an annunciator for low fuel pressure. The previous(er) owner had the limits set to alarm when the pressure would go below 2.4psi, it seems.
I turned on the boost pump, and the pressure came back up to around 5.8 PSI. I turned the boost pump off and it crept back down to around 2.4 or so. This became repeatable so I took a video of it.
I got some videos of this behavior. Trying to figure out how to share.
If I turned the boost pump on, it would come back up.
After a while, at cruise, leaned out properly, the fluctuations would stop and the pressure would be pretty consistent. For the rest of the flight, there weren't any issues.
Next day, similar behavior - around 10-15 minutes of flight time, climbing to altitude and leveling off, this would go on for a little while, and eventually stop.
No roughness from engine, EGTs/CHTs all in normal ranges, airplane flew just fine.
I called the previous owner and mentioned it - he says he has had that happen before, but that it stabilizes on level off and leaning operations for cruise.
Okay - so we have some consistent behavior. What I'm wondering is:
1) Why
2) Is this something I need to worry about
3) If the answer to 2 is yes, how I go about the analysis and troubleshooting.
Any thoughts, guidance and ruler-slapping-my-wrist for stupidity would be appreciated.