It wasn't my fault

[Bigglesworth]

Hi y'all

 

Been absent for a bit,

 

Just thought you might like to know a little bit of info.

 

As the regulars may recall, I had a bit of trouble with a burst oil cooler hose on the jab 2.2 in my Cheetah, it seemed to come good, and after external checking as prescribed by various experts (including Jabiru) I took off again only to have a 2nd engine failure a few minutes after take-off. 2nd forced landing in 2 days, the 2nd wasn't so smooth and resulted in damage to the plane.

 

From the looks of things (black, oily plugs) I had put the 2nd failure down to my tinkering with the main jet to try to richen it up to combat high EGTs.

 

But I pulled the motor down to get to the crankshaft to have it crack tested, and I found 3 out of four pistons had major wear on the skirt.

 

They had got hot with lack of oil, grabbed and made serious damage to the skirt, and a small amount of aluminium stuck to the cylinder. This didn't stop it running, and developing close enough to full power not to be noticed in checking, and it ran fine in the 2 hours of ground running.

 

But I didn't notice that the plugs had been slowly oiling up, until 1 cylinder failed just after take off.

 

So I may be up for 4 times $135 for pistons, and more for honing and whatever else. But for once I can say "IT WASN'T MY FAULT"

 

Somehow I wish it would be the other way, and it was my fault but the motor was fine. Pride is cheap.....