NetHeads, I flew my plane 1.3 hours yesterday, and during climbout the engine did some fairly serious "cutting out" at various rpms that appeared to have no correlation to each other. After cozying up to what passes for a big airport (MDQ) around here, I started playing around with mixture, carb heat, and everything else I could think of (including flipping the fuel/ignition swapout switch), and my final conclusion was that I have some water in my fuel. I've had a few traces of this behavior over the last few flights, but yesterday it really got my attention.
Here's my question: Has anybody else had water in their fuel, and if so, is the symptom that the engine cuts in and out rapidly and more or less sputters and scares the crap out of you? And it comes and goes with no real relation to anything else? I'm not used to water in the fuel in my cars, so this is a new phenomenon to me! I can't think of anything else that would cause this, and the real clue is the fuel mixture meter drops into the super lean area while it's misfiring. Recorded EIS info merely proved that it was misfiring for some reason. Oh, you thought I was grounded and still waiting on that Mahogony tree to grow? I still have the old Sterba prop, and the good news is that it's not really all that much different from the Sensenich from the vibration standpoint (must have been something with my "balanced" 3100cc). I now have some idea of the difference in power differential between the 3100cc and the 2700cc, but it's going to take some number crunching to quantify it. Bottom line is 160 rpm static, but there's also with a 40 degree temp delta, which makes it an even bigger difference. Right now my plan is to spend the day tomorrow flushing the fuel system and filters, as well as the Ellison. I talked to Ben and he gave me his blessing, since I convinced him I knew what I was doing. Well, maybe it wasn't his blessing, but he pretty much assured me that if I took it all apart, somebody of my experience level would be able to blow it all out and put it back together with no problems at all. Having rebuilt a whole bunch of carbs from Solexes to Webers, this thing looks like a 5 minute job. Funny thing is he said that if I removed the safety wire from the screws, my wife wouldn't be able to sue him over a faulty carb problem, which I'd have thought would have made him a happy man... Mark Langford, Harvest, AL see homebuilt airplane at http://www.N56ML.com email to N56ML "at" hiwaay.net
