---------------------------------------------------------- Stratus-List Digest Archive --- Total Messages Posted Sun 04/09/06: 5 ---------------------------------------------------------- Today's Message Index: ---------------------- 1. 05:11 PM - Forced landing in Ohio (Bryan Martin) 2. 05:34 PM - Re: Forced landing in Ohio (Hinde, Frank George (Corvallis)) 3. 06:25 PM - Re: Forced landing in Ohio (Don Walker) 4. 07:45 PM - Re: Forced landing in Ohio (Hinde, Frank George (Corvallis)) 5. 07:47 PM - Re: Forced landing in Ohio (Hinde, Frank George (Corvallis)) ________________________________ Message 1 _____________________________________ Time: 05:11:09 PM PST US Subject: Stratus-List: Forced landing in Ohio From: Bryan Martin --> Stratus-List message posted by: Bryan Martin I was planning to fly down to Sun 'N' Fun on the first of April in my Zodiac. The weather that morning in the Detroit area was crappy so I waited around until noon. At that time there was a 2000 foot overcast with 3000 foot tops and it had quit raining. The weather south of Ohio was reported as clear so I decided to take off and see. I flew under the Detroit class B at about 1500 feet and started to see some breaks in the overcast. An hour into the flight I was just southeast of the Toledo class C when the engine suddenly started shaking and lost about 600 RPM. I was about 5 miles north of Wood County Airport (1G0) so I pulled the throttle and started gliding towards the airport. All my guages were in the green and the engine stayed running but very rough. When I got down to about 200 feet above the ground with nothing but plowed fields and a crowded freeway below me I realized I wasn't going to be able to glide to the airport. The engine was still making power so I shoved the throttle back in and managed to get about 200 feet per minute climb rate out of it. It was enough to get me lined up on runway 18 with a 15 knot crosswind directly from the west. I called up the unicom and anounced my intentions and then made a safe landing. After I taxied up to the terminal, I shut it down and got out and started looking for the trouble. Everything looked OK from the outside of the engine. No oil or coolant leaks and no appearant damage. I didn't have enough tools with me to do muc troubleshooting so I barrowed the courtesy car to go down to the store to buy a spark plug wrench. I finally determined that I had no compression on the number 1 cylinder and when I pulled that plug, there was impact damage to the electrode. My preliminary determination was some sort of valve train failure. Since I couldn't do much to fix the problem right then and it wasn't fit to fly home, I tied it down for the night and called to reserve a rental car. The folks at Wood County treated me very well they even offered to put the plane in a hangar for the night. One of the instructors was giving a lesson that day and gave me a ride up to Toledo Express Airport so I could pick up my rental, saving me the expense of a taxi ride. I drove the rental home that night and the next day drove up to Midland to get my trailer and my dad and brother to help me recover the airplane. We then drove down to Bowling Green to tear down the plane for the haul back home. The people at the airport let me use put the plane in a hangar to dissasemble it for the trip back. It's a good thing they did, it was pouring down rain by the time we got done loading in the trailer. We got the plane back to my hangar at Ray and got the rental returned to the local depot and got back to Midland at about 2 AM. Monday evening, I decided to use some of my frequent flyer miles to complete the trip to Lakeland and let the airplane wait until I got back. Today I finally got to my hangar to start tearing down the engine to see what went wrong. I heard stories about valve guide failures in some of the EA81 engines so I thought I might find the same thing with mine. It turns out that the problem wasn't the valve guides. A big chunk of the intake valve in the number 1 cylinder broke off and did mayhem inside the engine. The piston had a bunch of holes in it and had several cracks clear across the face of the piston. The piston skirt must also be all broken up because you can rock the piston back and forth in the cylinder. There also seems to be some collateral damage to the intake valve in the number 3 cylinder, probably by bits of metal getting blown back into the intake manifold. Our resident engine expert took a look at the valve and decided that it was a fatigue failure possibly caused by a slight misalignment of the valve. There is some evidence that the valve was hitting harder on one side of the port than the other. I've put 145 hours on the engiine since I bought from Stratus. I plan on pulling off the other head to check it and will probably send both of them off to RAM for rebuild. -- Bryan Martin N61BM, CH 601 XL, Stratus Subaru. ________________________________ Message 2 _____________________________________ Time: 05:34:29 PM PST US Subject: RE: Stratus-List: Forced landing in Ohio From: "Hinde, Frank George (Corvallis)" --> Stratus-List message posted by: "Hinde, Frank George (Corvallis)" Bryan....Glad you made it down OK! Well we can't put this one down to valve guide slippage but if it was misalignment it still points to unacceptable work by the shop that Stratus uses to do its cylinder head work. Of course this is conjecture based on the message below. Sounds like you managed the situation well except it might have been prudent to not let the altitude decay so much before wringing what power you could out of the motor. I realise of course that engine performance decreases with altitude but would suggest giving it all she could would be better done at 2000 feet rather than 200. When you rebuild this engine (or more to the point when RAM DOES ALL THE MACHINING WORK ON YOUR REPLACEMENT ENGINE BLOCK(if that's whats required)) you will find it's a pretty cheap engine compared to the damage that could have been caused if your engine did not make any power at 200 feet. When my last valve guide failure happened I was fourtunate to be able to thrash it up to 4000 feet before I attempted to cross some very unhospitible terrain, lakes, town etc...So I could pretty much glide to the runway. Bryan, if your smart there is no "probably" about send the other head to Ram...YOU MUST send both to RAM. With respect you don't know if Stratus uses old valves or if they are new ones. You also have no idea if the workmanship in the other head is any better than the one that failed...Please don't even think of running the other head without RAM's stepped valve guide conversion, new springs and new SS valves. Fourtunatly Once Ram has sorted the heads the motor should be very reliable. If the bore is scored though, also have RAM rebore this (or a another core block) because they (as far as I know) are the only ones using a boring plate that takes account of the distortion from torquing the heads bolts which apparently is significant. .. For what its worth. Frank 601 HDS 394 hours...Three valve guide failures! -----Original Message----- From: owner-stratus-list-server@matronics.com [mailto:owner-stratus-list-server@matronics.com] On Behalf Of Bryan Martin Sent: Sunday, April 09, 2006 5:11 PM Subject: Stratus-List: Forced landing in Ohio --> Stratus-List message posted by: Bryan Martin --> I was planning to fly down to Sun 'N' Fun on the first of April in my Zodiac. The weather that morning in the Detroit area was crappy so I waited around until noon. At that time there was a 2000 foot overcast with 3000 foot tops and it had quit raining. The weather south of Ohio was reported as clear so I decided to take off and see. I flew under the Detroit class B at about 1500 feet and started to see some breaks in the overcast. An hour into the flight I was just southeast of the Toledo class C when the engine suddenly started shaking and lost about 600 RPM. I was about 5 miles north of Wood County Airport (1G0) so I pulled the throttle and started gliding towards the airport. All my guages were in the green and the engine stayed running but very rough. When I got down to about 200 feet above the ground with nothing but plowed fields and a crowded freeway below me I realized I wasn't going to be able to glide to the airport. The engine was still making power so I shoved the throttle back in and managed to get about 200 feet per minute climb rate out of it. It was enough to get me lined up on runway 18 with a 15 knot crosswind directly from the west. I called up the unicom and anounced my intentions and then made a safe landing. After I taxied up to the terminal, I shut it down and got out and started looking for the trouble. Everything looked OK from the outside of the engine. No oil or coolant leaks and no appearant damage. I didn't have enough tools with me to do muc troubleshooting so I barrowed the courtesy car to go down to the store to buy a spark plug wrench. I finally determined that I had no compression on the number 1 cylinder and when I pulled that plug, there was impact damage to the electrode. My preliminary determination was some sort of valve train failure. Since I couldn't do much to fix the problem right then and it wasn't fit to fly home, I tied it down for the night and called to reserve a rental car. The folks at Wood County treated me very well they even offered to put the plane in a hangar for the night. One of the instructors was giving a lesson that day and gave me a ride up to Toledo Express Airport so I could pick up my rental, saving me the expense of a taxi ride. I drove the rental home that night and the next day drove up to Midland to get my trailer and my dad and brother to help me recover the airplane. We then drove down to Bowling Green to tear down the plane for the haul back home. The people at the airport let me use put the plane in a hangar to dissasemble it for the trip back. It's a good thing they did, it was pouring down rain by the time we got done loading in the trailer. We got the plane back to my hangar at Ray and got the rental returned to the local depot and got back to Midland at about 2 AM. Monday evening, I decided to use some of my frequent flyer miles to complete the trip to Lakeland and let the airplane wait until I got back. Today I finally got to my hangar to start tearing down the engine to see what went wrong. I heard stories about valve guide failures in some of the EA81 engines so I thought I might find the same thing with mine. It turns out that the problem wasn't the valve guides. A big chunk of the intake valve in the number 1 cylinder broke off and did mayhem inside the engine. The piston had a bunch of holes in it and had several cracks clear across the face of the piston. The piston skirt must also be all broken up because you can rock the piston back and forth in the cylinder. There also seems to be some collateral damage to the intake valve in the number 3 cylinder, probably by bits of metal getting blown back into the intake manifold. Our resident engine expert took a look at the valve and decided that it was a fatigue failure possibly caused by a slight misalignment of the valve. There is some evidence that the valve was hitting harder on one side of the port than the other. I've put 145 hours on the engiine since I bought from Stratus. I plan on pulling off the other head to check it and will probably send both of them off to RAM for rebuild. -- Bryan Martin N61BM, CH 601 XL, Stratus Subaru. ________________________________ Message 3 _____________________________________ Time: 06:25:43 PM PST US From: "Don Walker" Subject: Re: Stratus-List: Forced landing in Ohio --> Stratus-List message posted by: "Don Walker" Bryan, Frank's advice is good. The same thing happened to me at 4000 ft. One cylinder quit due to the spark plug gap being closed due to a blow from a chunk...of the valve guide. MY POINT though is that I got a replacement cylinder from Mikel, free of charge, but it failed too from the same problem...loose valve guides that were inappropriately installed...with knurling just like the original failure. I think he may use a better method now, but why take the chance. Do it right now is my advice. don walker ----- Original Message ----- From: Hinde, Frank George (Corvallis) To: stratus-list@matronics.com Sent: Sunday, April 09, 2006 7:33 PM Subject: RE: Stratus-List: Forced landing in Ohio --> Stratus-List message posted by: "Hinde, Frank George (Corvallis)" > Bryan....Glad you made it down OK! Well we can't put this one down to valve guide slippage but if it was misalignment it still points to unacceptable work by the shop that Stratus uses to do its cylinder head work. Of course this is conjecture based on the message below. Sounds like you managed the situation well except it might have been prudent to not let the altitude decay so much before wringing what power you could out of the motor. I realise of course that engine performance decreases with altitude but would suggest giving it all she could would be better done at 2000 feet rather than 200. When you rebuild this engine (or more to the point when RAM DOES ALL THE MACHINING WORK ON YOUR REPLACEMENT ENGINE BLOCK(if that's whats required)) you will find it's a pretty cheap engine compared to the damage that could have been caused if your engine did not make any power at 200 feet. When my last valve guide failure happened I was fourtunate to be able to thrash it up to 4000 feet before I attempted to cross some very unhospitible terrain, lakes, town etc...So I could pretty much glide to the runway. Bryan, if your smart there is no "probably" about send the other head to Ram...YOU MUST send both to RAM. With respect you don't know if Stratus uses old valves or if they are new ones. You also have no idea if the workmanship in the other head is any better than the one that failed...Please don't even think of running the other head without RAM's stepped valve guide conversion, new springs and new SS valves. Fourtunatly Once Ram has sorted the heads the motor should be very reliable. If the bore is scored though, also have RAM rebore this (or a another core block) because they (as far as I know) are the only ones using a boring plate that takes account of the distortion from torquing the heads bolts which apparently is significant. . For what its worth. Frank 601 HDS 394 hours...Three valve guide failures! -----Original Message----- From: owner-stratus-list-server@matronics.com [mailto:owner-stratus-list-server@matronics.com] On Behalf Of Bryan Martin Sent: Sunday, April 09, 2006 5:11 PM To: Stratus List; Zenith List Subject: Stratus-List: Forced landing in Ohio --> Stratus-List message posted by: Bryan Martin --> > I was planning to fly down to Sun 'N' Fun on the first of April in my Zodiac. The weather that morning in the Detroit area was crappy so I waited around until noon. At that time there was a 2000 foot overcast with 3000 foot tops and it had quit raining. The weather south of Ohio was reported as clear so I decided to take off and see. I flew under the Detroit class B at about 1500 feet and started to see some breaks in the overcast. An hour into the flight I was just southeast of the Toledo class C when the engine suddenly started shaking and lost about 600 RPM. I was about 5 miles north of Wood County Airport (1G0) so I pulled the throttle and started gliding towards the airport. All my guages were in the green and the engine stayed running but very rough. When I got down to about 200 feet above the ground with nothing but plowed fields and a crowded freeway below me I realized I wasn't going to be able to glide to the airport. The engine was still making power so I shoved the throttle back in and managed to get about 200 feet per minute climb rate out of it. It was enough to get me lined up on runway 18 with a 15 knot crosswind directly from the west. I called up the unicom and anounced my intentions and then made a safe landing. After I taxied up to the terminal, I shut it down and got out and started looking for the trouble. Everything looked OK from the outside of the engine. No oil or coolant leaks and no appearant damage. I didn't have enough tools with me to do muc troubleshooting so I barrowed the courtesy car to go down to the store to buy a spark plug wrench. I finally determined that I had no compression on the number 1 cylinder and when I pulled that plug, there was impact damage to the electrode. My preliminary determination was some sort of valve train failure. Since I couldn't do much to fix the problem right then and it wasn't fit to fly home, I tied it down for the night and called to reserve a rental car. The folks at Wood County treated me very well they even offered to put the plane in a hangar for the night. One of the instructors was giving a lesson that day and gave me a ride up to Toledo Express Airport so I could pick up my rental, saving me the expense of a taxi ride. I drove the rental home that night and the next day drove up to Midland to get my trailer and my dad and brother to help me recover the airplane. We then drove down to Bowling Green to tear down the plane for the haul back home. The people at the airport let me use put the plane in a hangar to dissasemble it for the trip back. It's a good thing they did, it was pouring down rain by the time we got done loading in the trailer. We got the plane back to my hangar at Ray and got the rental returned to the local depot and got back to Midland at about 2 AM. Monday evening, I decided to use some of my frequent flyer miles to complete the trip to Lakeland and let the airplane wait until I got back. Today I finally got to my hangar to start tearing down the engine to see what went wrong. I heard stories about valve guide failures in some of the EA81 engines so I thought I might find the same thing with mine. It turns out that the problem wasn't the valve guides. A big chunk of the intake valve in the number 1 cylinder broke off and did mayhem inside the engine. The piston had a bunch of holes in it and had several cracks clear across the face of the piston. The piston skirt must also be all broken up because you can rock the piston back and forth in the cylinder. There also seems to be some collateral damage to the intake valve in the number 3 cylinder, probably by bits of metal getting blown back into the intake manifold. Our resident engine expert took a look at the valve and decided that it was a fatigue failure possibly caused by a slight misalignment of the valve. There is some evidence that the valve was hitting harder on one side of the port than the other. I've put 145 hours on the engiine since I bought from Stratus. I plan on pulling off the other head to check it and will probably send both of them off to RAM for rebuild. -- Bryan Martin N61BM, CH 601 XL, Stratus Subaru. ________________________________ Message 4 _____________________________________ Time: 07:45:25 PM PST US Subject: RE: Stratus-List: Forced landing in Ohio From: "Hinde, Frank George (Corvallis)" --> Stratus-List message posted by: "Hinde, Frank George (Corvallis)" I believe the "better method" that Stratus uses is a circlip on a standard sized valve guide...And that was the setup I had on my last failure...In other words it failed just like the rest of them. They may have upgraded their methods since my last failure but to be quite blunt Ron Carr and I walked through the process he would use, the parts he would supply and he is the only rebuilder I would feel comfortable has the required level of knowledge and access to CNC machine tools to make the required parts for a safe engine. In the grand scheme of things the cost is peanuts compared with the potential alternative. Frank 1500 bucks spent on multiple cylinder head rebuilds! But I love my engine now. -----Original Message----- From: owner-stratus-list-server@matronics.com [mailto:owner-stratus-list-server@matronics.com] On Behalf Of Don Walker Sent: Sunday, April 09, 2006 6:23 PM Subject: Re: Stratus-List: Forced landing in Ohio --> Stratus-List message posted by: "Don Walker" Bryan, Frank's advice is good. The same thing happened to me at 4000 ft. One cylinder quit due to the spark plug gap being closed due to a blow from a chunk...of the valve guide. MY POINT though is that I got a replacement cylinder from Mikel, free of charge, but it failed too from the same problem...loose valve guides that were inappropriately installed...with knurling just like the original failure. I think he may use a better method now, but why take the chance. Do it right now is my advice. don walker ----- Original Message ----- From: Hinde, Frank George (Corvallis) To: stratus-list@matronics.com Sent: Sunday, April 09, 2006 7:33 PM Subject: RE: Stratus-List: Forced landing in Ohio --> Stratus-List message posted by: "Hinde, Frank George (Corvallis)" > Bryan....Glad you made it down OK! Well we can't put this one down to valve guide slippage but if it was misalignment it still points to unacceptable work by the shop that Stratus uses to do its cylinder head work. Of course this is conjecture based on the message below. Sounds like you managed the situation well except it might have been prudent to not let the altitude decay so much before wringing what power you could out of the motor. I realise of course that engine performance decreases with altitude but would suggest giving it all she could would be better done at 2000 feet rather than 200. When you rebuild this engine (or more to the point when RAM DOES ALL THE MACHINING WORK ON YOUR REPLACEMENT ENGINE BLOCK(if that's whats required)) you will find it's a pretty cheap engine compared to the damage that could have been caused if your engine did not make any power at 200 feet. When my last valve guide failure happened I was fourtunate to be able to thrash it up to 4000 feet before I attempted to cross some very unhospitible terrain, lakes, town etc...So I could pretty much glide to the runway. Bryan, if your smart there is no "probably" about send the other head to Ram...YOU MUST send both to RAM. With respect you don't know if Stratus uses old valves or if they are new ones. You also have no idea if the workmanship in the other head is any better than the one that failed...Please don't even think of running the other head without RAM's stepped valve guide conversion, new springs and new SS valves. Fourtunatly Once Ram has sorted the heads the motor should be very reliable. If the bore is scored though, also have RAM rebore this (or a another core block) because they (as far as I know) are the only ones using a boring plate that takes account of the distortion from torquing the heads bolts which apparently is significant. . For what its worth. Frank 601 HDS 394 hours...Three valve guide failures! -----Original Message----- From: owner-stratus-list-server@matronics.com [mailto:owner-stratus-list-server@matronics.com] On Behalf Of Bryan Martin Sent: Sunday, April 09, 2006 5:11 PM To: Stratus List; Zenith List Subject: Stratus-List: Forced landing in Ohio --> Stratus-List message posted by: Bryan Martin --> > I was planning to fly down to Sun 'N' Fun on the first of April in my Zodiac. The weather that morning in the Detroit area was crappy so I waited around until noon. At that time there was a 2000 foot overcast with 3000 foot tops and it had quit raining. The weather south of Ohio was reported as clear so I decided to take off and see. I flew under the Detroit class B at about 1500 feet and started to see some breaks in the overcast. An hour into the flight I was just southeast of the Toledo class C when the engine suddenly started shaking and lost about 600 RPM. I was about 5 miles north of Wood County Airport (1G0) so I pulled the throttle and started gliding towards the airport. All my guages were in the green and the engine stayed running but very rough. When I got down to about 200 feet above the ground with nothing but plowed fields and a crowded freeway below me I realized I wasn't going to be able to glide to the airport. The engine was still making power so I shoved the throttle back in and managed to get about 200 feet per minute climb rate out of it. It was enough to get me lined up on runway 18 with a 15 knot crosswind directly from the west. I called up the unicom and anounced my intentions and then made a safe landing. After I taxied up to the terminal, I shut it down and got out and started looking for the trouble. Everything looked OK from the outside of the engine. No oil or coolant leaks and no appearant damage. I didn't have enough tools with me to do muc troubleshooting so I barrowed the courtesy car to go down to the store to buy a spark plug wrench. I finally determined that I had no compression on the number 1 cylinder and when I pulled that plug, there was impact damage to the electrode. My preliminary determination was some sort of valve train failure. Since I couldn't do much to fix the problem right then and it wasn't fit to fly home, I tied it down for the night and called to reserve a rental car. The folks at Wood County treated me very well they even offered to put the plane in a hangar for the night. One of the instructors was giving a lesson that day and gave me a ride up to Toledo Express Airport so I could pick up my rental, saving me the expense of a taxi ride. I drove the rental home that night and the next day drove up to Midland to get my trailer and my dad and brother to help me recover the airplane. We then drove down to Bowling Green to tear down the plane for the haul back home. The people at the airport let me use put the plane in a hangar to dissasemble it for the trip back. It's a good thing they did, it was pouring down rain by the time we got done loading in the trailer. We got the plane back to my hangar at Ray and got the rental returned to the local depot and got back to Midland at about 2 AM. Monday evening, I decided to use some of my frequent flyer miles to complete the trip to Lakeland and let the airplane wait until I got back. Today I finally got to my hangar to start tearing down the engine to see what went wrong. I heard stories about valve guide failures in some of the EA81 engines so I thought I might find the same thing with mine. It turns out that the problem wasn't the valve guides. A big chunk of the intake valve in the number 1 cylinder broke off and did mayhem inside the engine. The piston had a bunch of holes in it and had several cracks clear across the face of the piston. The piston skirt must also be all broken up because you can rock the piston back and forth in the cylinder. There also seems to be some collateral damage to the intake valve in the number 3 cylinder, probably by bits of metal getting blown back into the intake manifold. Our resident engine expert took a look at the valve and decided that it was a fatigue failure possibly caused by a slight misalignment of the valve. There is some evidence that the valve was hitting harder on one side of the port than the other. I've put 145 hours on the engiine since I bought from Stratus. I plan on pulling off the other head to check it and will probably send both of them off to RAM for rebuild. -- Bryan Martin N61BM, CH 601 XL, Stratus Subaru. ________________________________ Message 5 _____________________________________ Time: 07:47:37 PM PST US Subject: RE: Stratus-List: Forced landing in Ohio From: "Hinde, Frank George (Corvallis)" --> Stratus-List message posted by: "Hinde, Frank George (Corvallis)" Oh incidently....I would ask RAM to proveide standard sized valves rather than the oversize he normally does...Reason being you will want to check your carb jet sizes, mine needed to be upsized quite a bit...If you do have the oversized valve guides be prepared for some time to size the carb jets (Bing has a manual on how to do it),...Someone else may have the jet sizes they used with the RAM larger valves...Might save some time... Frank