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1. 10:56 PM - cub quitting on landings........ (Phil Sisson, Litchfield Aerobatic Club)
2. 11:04 PM - Re: J3 flyers (Phil Sisson, Litchfield Aerobatic Club)
Message 1
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Cy Galley <cgalley@qcbc.org>, Ron Wanttaja <ikvamar@gte.net>,
Larry Robbins <larrybojac@earthlink.net>
| Subject: | cub quitting on landings........ |
--> Cub-List message posted by: "Phil Sisson, Litchfield Aerobatic Club" <sisson@consolidated.net>
This is long dis-regard all spelling and punctuation flaws.....
We have the Cub purrring like a kitten.
This was a hard one. It is not real logical but it is fixed.
We bought this cub in December at
Centralia, IL. Our location is perhaps 50 "crow" miles North-West of
there. The airplane had not been flown for a couple of years. In 1994
the engine was given a good overhaul. This included all accessories. hmm
Carb and two mags. However, the engine wasn't installed until 1998 as
the airframe was also going through a complete restoration also. This
all happened in SW Texas. The airplane was ferried to Southern IL and
there it made its home until we came along and heard it was for sale. We
looked it over in early December and everything seemed in order, so a
gang of us got some dough together and bought it on December 17th.(100th
aniversary)
December 18th, we drained the fuel and put in new car gas. It was cold
that day and it took a while to get it started and warmed up. We had put
some hair driers into it to warm thngs up and they did a real good job
getting the kidney warmed up.
It was a little stubborn to keep running, but finally we got it going.
We knew we were going to put a lot of hours getting it ready for the
annual.
I took off and headed out. We planned a stop at Greenville, IL to trade
pilots. This was maybe 20 or 25 crow miles. There are a lot of crows
around here. After landing at Greenville, the engine quit on landing
roll, we then knew something was not quite the norm. While there we put
in 3 1/2 gals of avgas to mix with the car gas. We traded planes, I flew
a pretty RV3 the rest of the way while Perry flew the Cub. It was a
short trip to Litchfield, (3LF). When he landed, again the engine quit.
Funny thing, it would restart real easily about the third blade
everytime withought touching anything, but you had to get it above 1000
to keep it running smoothly.
The engine was not going to be our real problem because most of us were
somewhat up on engines, besides that, this was just an A65.. (dumb asses
we are)
I did one of them for my A'n'P back in the late 60's. Simple little
thing....
So we went into the airframe and boy did we open a can of worms there.
Nothing real bad, but a lot of little bitty things, like no cotter pin
in the nut and bolt that holds "up" elevator cable on right behind the
seat, etc, etc, and on and on and on.....
Oh well that was what inspections are for. except I missed that on the
ferry inspection and the nut was nearly off.
I think I am getting carried away. Back to the engine. When we checked
the oil screen, it was caked full of hard sludge, not completely. No
metal was in it, but a lot of hard sludge build up. (Keep this in mind
for later)
We finally got the airplane in real good shape and annual'd. It had
great compression and from the looks of things all was done right. We
started flying it and again nearly every landing it would die unless you
were very clever with the throttle. While analyzing this we noticed that
when the engine warmed up good the oil pressure would drop to a pretty
low level. after a couple of hours, we decided that this was more
important than the running problem, so we tore it apart.
All crank journals were bad. All other steel parts showed no signs of
excessive wear. Most things were new at overhaul. Case was align bored,
new cam, cam followers, hydraulic plungers, new pistons valves, oil
pump, and almost everything you could think of except case and crank.
But for some crazy reason this shaft went bad, we suspect possible oil
starvation, but it seems there would have been severe wear on some of
the other rotating parts and cam to cam follower wear, but there wasn't.
This shaft had been turned down 10 thous. and I was wondering if there
was a metalergical problem with it. Maybe supposed to have been nitrided
and not. or wrong alloy to begin with. Who knows.... As luck would have
it, back in the 60's I found an old engine in the junk yard. The man at
the junk yard said he would have to have $2 because it had that much
aluminum in it. It was missing a jug and there was a rats nest in it.
probably had been in a coal shed. I took it to the local airport and the
shop mechanic offered to buy the three jugs from me for $25 each so I
sold them. At that point of time, I was $73 ahead and still had some
internal parts and a case. I took it apart looked things over, and threw
away most of it. I kept the case and shaft. For 40 years now I have been
stumbling over that shaft. Every so often, I would pour some oil on it
and grunt about it. A few months ago, I had made up my mind that I would
throw it in the trash this spring, because I was never going to use it
and I was tired of stepping over it, and besides it was probably out of
specs.
When our shaft went bad we checked this one with thoughts of just maybe
it would go a 10 under grind. We got it out and bingo, it was a perfect
ten under and all was great, it looked like new shaft. We checked it and
stuck it in. Purrs like a kitten, except it still quits on landings and
doesnt want to keep running.
That is where our story began.
We took the overhauled carb apart to check it. Again, almost everything
seemed new in it, it was done right by a carb overhaul shop. We wondered
about mags. It has Eisemans on it. We took one apart, it was like new
inside, they had both been in a shop in the NorhtWest that specializes
in mags. all kinds of new parts and just the slightest motion makes a
great spark.
Checked intake system, changed all gaskets, tightened all hoses. Primer
was sucking some fuel, the guy who rebuilt airplane had installed it
wrong, we fixed it, still no luck.....
We took the carb apart a couple times to check and recheck the float
settings, check all passages again and again. We changed mags with one
that was working on another engine. Changed spark plugs a couple of
times. (Not new ones-cleaned old ones)
Still it quit on landings--- But we have great oil pressure now.
Finally after trying different auto fuels, we switched to some avgas,
which we should have done right off. Ureka, This was the problem. For
some reason, this engine does not like car gas.are we getting some
additives in the winter time that they are preparing for St. Louis EPA
problems??? DUNNO
We had ran it on avgas earlier, but it was a mixture. This time we ran
all car gas out of it and it works perfect on pure av-gas.
There is a reason for this. I don't know it yet, but a Luscombe right
next door runs good on car gas. but he hasn't ran it since cold weather
set in. We used its mag and carburetor which did run his, but ours
doesnt. Our friend who has the RV-3 always runs car gas in his 150 lyc.
I ran it most of the time in my 180 Pitts. But this Cub does not like
it.
A friend of mine, Giles Henderson has a Clipped Cub, he runs car gas
most of the time. Giles is retired from Eastern Illinois University
where he was a Chemistry Professor. He told us some things about auto
fuels that he learned when testing these fuels with a gas chromatograph
in their laboratory. He said that sometimes a fuel will leave a very
sooty-oily residue which alludes to being rich when in fact it is
running lean. It is because of the different flame propogation of the
different components in the car gas. He was refering to fuels with lots
of benzine to replace lead which is no longer the anti knock agent.
This was one of our problems, we would check the plugs and they almost
always had the appearance of being oil and soot fouled. The engine uses
hardly any oil. After we switched to av gas, they cleaned up, the
exhaust pipe cleaned up and all is good.
The fuel we used the most of was a Mobile premium. We tried small
quantities of Amoco premium.
The Mobile premium has an amber color to it while the Amoco almost looks
like 100 LL....
We are going to test some different fuels hoping to find one that works
good for us here.
When I first mentioned this problem to Cy and the Cub list, I said we
had tried all fuels with the same results. It had slipped my mind that
we had mixed the av gas at Greenville with an equal amount of Mobil.
Perhaps the Mobil fuel was older, has different additives for the
winter, or who knows.
I hope I didnt bore everyone with this, but I said I would let people
know what I found.
I plan to leave here with it about the 11th for SnF. It will take two
days plus to get there. I will try to park at IAC tent. If you see It or
me there, say hi or stick a note inside it, up on the instrument panel.
Here is a picture of our Cub and the website for our city airport
http://www.wamusa.com/members/airport/
go to pilot information. Photography by Jim Wright in his Luscombe 8A.
Phil Sisson in Litchfield, IL
Message 2
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--> Cub-List message posted by: "Phil Sisson, Litchfield Aerobatic Club" <sisson@consolidated.net>
Please excuse the cub picture to the list.
I didn't mean to post it.
do not archive
Phil
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