As most all of you know last summer was not a good summer of flying for me. I had three incidents which grounded me. The first was the deer strike on May 15th. Then came the crank breakage on August 16th and then the cam gear failure on November 1st. But now, this is the "Dawning of the age of new flight" for me. Over this past brutal Wisconsin winter, I once again tore my engine completely down for yet another rebuild. I am at the point that I can build a Corvair engine with only looking at the manual for torque values. So does that make me a professional Corvair builder. NO. And that is why this time I choose to Hire Mark at Falcon Automotive to help me build this engine. And I must say that he has served me well as has William Wynne (for obvious reasons), Dan Weseman (for his fifth bearing), Mark Langford (for all the designs of his that are on my engine), Joe Horton (for his knowledge and encouragement).....Gee I could keep naming names but I do not have all night. So, thank all of you in the Corvaircraft and KR world who have helped me maintain flight status and all the encouragement from all of you. Anyway, I now have 6.5 flight hours on my new engine which has the Weseman Fifth Bearing. I just returned from a 1.2 hour flight this evening and I must say I have a totally dry engine. There is not a drop of oil leaking anywhere. This took some work but I achieved the dry engine and I am one happy camper. The engine is performing flawlessly and the fifth bearing has made a difference of night and day in the performance. This engine is smoother than any of my previous builds. I used to fight a bad vibration as I reduced rpm from 3450 to 3000. This was like a no fly range for me. With Dan's fifth bearing I can now fly at any rpm I choose since 99.8% of the vibration has disappeared. I am sure with dynamic prop balancing I can eliminate virtually all the vibration. For some reason my confidence level in this wonderful engine is growing immensely. As a matter of fact, tonight I was at 7500' doing wing overs and very unusual attitudes. Simply having the time of my life. When I pulled back in the hangar, I removed the cowl and there was not a drop of oil anywhere. Life is good and flying is awesome. Keep up the building guys 'cause I want all of you to experience the exhilaration that we as Corvair and KR flyers get to enjoy.
Mark Jones (N886MJ) Stevens Point, WI E-mail: flyk...@charter.net Web: www.flykr2s.com
