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Messages - av-mech

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61
Hangar Flying / Oshkosh trip
« on: August 02, 2011, 01:41:44 PM »
Well my son and I have returned from Oshkosh.  The Varieze performed flawlessly.  My  average cruise was about 170 MPH with a very consistant 5.5 gph.  With that kind of performance we can make Oshkosh from Leesburg FL in one day, the weather prevented that this year however.  We left early last tuesday trying to beat the build-ups in north GA but we were to late.........spent the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon in the FBO at Albany GA.  Left late afternoon and made Mc Minville TN for our overnight.  Left early Wednesday and made a brief stop in Terre Haute IN and then on to Peroia IL, sat all afternoon due to storms in OSH.  Left late and just made OSH about 7:30.  Spent a few days at the show and a few days over at the Dells doing the waterpark with my wife and kids. 

Came back yesterday, left the dells and flew 2.4 hrs to Sellersburg IN (clark county).  Fueled and then 3.2 to Albany where I met by buddy Bobby Kirby with his Lancair Super ES.  Strong weather in north Florida made us overnight again.  Had to wait for fog this morning but ended up leaving around 10:30.   1.2 hrs to Klee and we were home.  It was my son's first long cross country and we had a great time together.

62
Hangar Flying / Re: Varieze Rudder trim
« on: July 25, 2011, 06:33:28 PM »
Rob,

Thanks it was fun flying over to Orlando North, good to get practice on a shorter narrower strip.

Joe,

i have been working through the CP's but it takes time to shift through them all.  It's really good reading.

"Wheel" up at 0700 tomorrow morning.

63
Hangar Flying / Re: Varieze Rudder trim
« on: July 22, 2011, 12:04:05 PM »
I have now installed and 1/8 shim under the left rudder and that has all but eliminated my rudder trim problems.  Attached is a picture of my rudder with the shim installed.  It now climbs and cruises with no rudder trim needed.  A bit of a relief as I was getting tired of chasing it all over the place.

64
Hangar Flying / Re: N80SH back in the air!
« on: July 22, 2011, 11:58:51 AM »
Jamie,

I will not be arriving until Wednesday morning.  Feel free to contact me via email or phone, listed below

arnold@av-mech.com
352-617-2029

65
Hangar Flying / Re: Oil breather mod
« on: July 20, 2011, 07:52:59 PM »
Well the good news is that the fitting worked great.  I flew two sorties today with only a few drops of oil on the cowling after a total of 1.5 hours.  Can't really complain about that I guess.  I found that you could buy one of those parts pre-made by Continental for about 225.00, there is another company on the net selling the same thing I made for around 165.00.  I made mine for about 10 bucks!

66
Hangar Flying / Oil breather mod
« on: July 20, 2011, 01:57:51 PM »
So in my continuing effort to reduce oil coming out of the breather tube I have manufactured the following part.  It is TIG welded from a AN824-10D elbow and some 6061-T6 tubing.  It screws into the breather port on the nose of the engine.

67
Hangar Flying / Re: slime fighter
« on: July 19, 2011, 08:20:02 PM »
I think that's great advice.  I was not defending the product from any questions but was making a point about passing judgement.  I ask questions about everything, I am naturally skeptical having been around experimental aviation for 25 years.  I get to be less agreeable when somebody simply throws out negative waves with out knowledge of what they are passing judgement on.

68
Hangar Flying / Varieze Exhaust
« on: July 19, 2011, 09:53:19 AM »
When I rebuilt my varieze I did not have a stock Varieze O-200 exhaust.  I built my own exhaust and it seems to work well enough (although completly different from the stock exhaust).  I have recently been given a set of varieze stock pipes, the one's that go out to the edge of the cowling.

I would like to try putting them on just to get some comparitive data, maybe I'll keep them maybe I won't but I'd like to try them.  Can anyone provide some details on the exhuast stack stub and how the springs are hooked up on the cylinder side??

thanks a million

69
Hangar Flying / Re: slime fighter
« on: July 18, 2011, 08:59:42 PM »
Joe,

That's a ton of great information.  I did find today that the vent hole in the top of my breather hose did little to abate the problem.  I am going to change to position of where the tube overboards and also add the extension to the breather fitting.  I had that fix hanging in my back pocket if all else failed.

Flew the eze down to Plant City from Leesburg this afternoon.  Climbed to 5500, just below the puffies and cruised along listening to the XM radio (blues station).  I don't have pants or cuffs and my prop is not quite right but I still made 159 KTS GS in cruise congfiguration.  Letting down at about 500 fpm I just left the power up and was seeing 180 KTS GS.  I called 5 miles out and almost immediatly found myself calling left base!!  One guy at the airport said I looked like a supersonic gnat!!  Going home was a little slower due to a headwind but I guess you can't win'em all......  I was light on fuel and the plane was behaving well. 

70
Hangar Flying / Re: slime fighter
« on: July 18, 2011, 01:19:09 PM »
Bill,

I checked the O-200 overhaul manual and it has two pieces of interesting information.

1.  Crankcase pressure measured using a manometer should not exceed 1".  the manual does not mention how to hook up a manometer to the engine case, any thoughts on that??

2.  The oil breather fitting is 5/8" dia, which is smaller than the 3/4" you mentioned.  I don't know about blowing the seal out using anything smaller than 3/4" but maybe it has something to do with the length of the hose casuing some extra back pressure?? 

71
Hangar Flying / Re: slime fighter
« on: July 18, 2011, 10:13:12 AM »
BTW, you can see that I haved some cosmetic work yet to do on the cowlings.  Please forgive me for not getting that done before OSH.  I have changed the exhaust system from the original design and have not had time to fix up the cowlings yet.

72
Hangar Flying / Re: slime fighter
« on: July 18, 2011, 10:10:42 AM »
I believe I did answer his question of "what does it do".  It returns oil to the CC by allowing the vapors to deposit oil on the disks inside the canister.   The liqud oil runs back down the oil breather tube and into the engine.

My Varieze is a rebuild job.  the airframe was complete but structurally damaged when I bought it.  As such there were things already attached to the airframe that I simply hooked back up when I rebuilt it.  One of those things was a small aluminum tube mounted on the outboard lower cowling (right side), it was the overboard for the CC breather.  The problem I have had is that it seems to be sucking an excess amount of oil out of the engine and leaving a lot of it on the cowling.  The engine was a direct transplant from my Cessna 150 which was flown regularly and did not lose the same amount of oil via the breather.  I installed the slime fighter to see if it would resolve the problem.  For the most part it did but I still have a little oil coming out.  I have cut a vent hole in the breather tube in hopes that it will vent anymore suction that is on that line.  See picture for location of breather line termination.  I suspect that there is a vacuum being created there.

73
Hangar Flying / Re: slime fighter
« on: July 17, 2011, 03:00:59 PM »
Bruce,

Additionally I would disagree with you on your comment concerning the slimefighter "only" making money for the company that sells it.  It did work on my aircraft even if it did not eliminate the problem completly.  I would advise a more diplomatic approach to your comments on items you have not researched, held in your hand or even tried on your aircraft. 

Could you please explain your position on why it would be better for aircraft that are not pushers.

I have had several "experts" look at my entire aircraft and all have found it to be safe and airworthy in all regards.  I have flown the first 12 hours with virtually no squawks and only minor adjustments so I feel like to this point, I have done a good job with how I have prepared the aircraft.

74
Hangar Flying / Re: slime fighter
« on: July 17, 2011, 02:53:31 PM »
The slimefighter has a set of floating disks inside that allow the oil to collect on them as it enters the chamber.  The oil flows off the disks and drains back down the tube as a solid instead of the vapor that it was when it came out of the case.  I had a simple tube running forward and up, passing through the baffling and then making it's way out to the right aft corner of the lower cowling.  I was getting oil on the trailing edge of the cowling on the right side.  Turns out that the slime fighter did help this scenario but did not eliminate it as I had hoped.  I started thinking that maybe I was getting a little to much crankcase pressure and decided to do a compression check (hot) after flying today.  All cylinders were in the mid 70's.  I am starting to think that there may just be enough low pressure at the outboard trailing edge of the cowl that it's creating too much suction and its pulling oil out.  I did not have a vent hole on the hose and I have put one in now, won't know how well that works until I fly again tomorrow.  I am hoping that it will provide a vent for the suction in the hose.

Bruce, I disagree with you on the CHT lines.  Look close and you will see that there is an adel clamp holding them at the center of the engine, then where they get close to the cylinders I have cushioned them with high temp RTV and then it's just a short turn to the plug holes where they terminate. 

75
Hangar Flying / slime fighter
« on: July 15, 2011, 04:12:17 PM »
Thought you might like to see the installation of my "slime fighter" on my oil breather hose.

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