Hello WIXers,
Hot Stuff is away at the Youngstown, Ohio airshow ("Thunder in the Valley"), and I'm home awaiting a report from the crew on the day's activities. So, who knows what's going on up there, but in the meantime I can catch up on the maintenance report, which concerns the preparations earlier in the week for the show.
Routine maintenance, for starters--the crew did an oil change on both sides. We're doing 10-hour oil changes on the left side for now, until we know for sure what we've got with this new engine, and with sufficient oil on hand, may as well have new clean oil on the right side, too.
No pictures of that evolution, unfortunately. It's dirty work, every time, no matter how many precautions one takes. The main oil tank drain is in the wheel well, outboard. It's a "Y" valve that is normally safety-wired closed. When we know it's nearly time for an oil change, we run the mains down to 8-10 gallons. Drain the dirty oil into 5-gallon buckets for hauling over to the oil dump.
The oil cooler also has a drain plug, and that makes another bucket-load. Pull the main oil screen ( bottom of the engine, directly over the cooler) and various plugs and finger screens as well, and that will account for more oily dribbling, which goes on for quite some while.
Then close it all up again, and either pour new oil into the main tank, or transfer from the aux tank to fill it (15 gallons in the 20-gallon tank is what we like to have).
So the old girl's zeroed out on the oil-change interval again. Too bad they didn't start that process till I'd already headed for home, but so it goes.
A few days before an airshow, it's the usual practice to wash the plane, so she'll look her best for the people.
There's PJ, doing what needs to be done like the conscientious crew chief that she is.
Normall, everyone pitches in for the wash-down, but this was more of a touch-up job this time, and anyhow there was one item on the to-do list that was not routine maintenance: on a training hop the day before, a hot brake had unaccountably arisen on the right side. So Long Tall Glen and Machine Shop Gaylon attacked that problem.
The left side had not gotten hot, and in any case no unusual/heavy braking had occurred. First thing was to get the wheel off to see what we could see in the brake stack.
There you see Gaylon preparing to jack the plane. He is installing his strut-extension preventer (pat. pend.), which lets us keep the jack extension to a minimum while still getting the tire off the ground.
With the wheel off, Glen and Gaylon investigated things. First notable feature, right off, was the bright blue color of the rotors--big heat, to make that color change. The bearings were fine, so that wasn't the problem.
With the stack disassembled, the problem showed itself--one of the rotors had started to come apart and shed material, some of which got under the piston. This prevented the piston from releasing, and hence the friction and the heat.
The boys replaced the entire stack, and the seal, heat shield, piston, and lock ring to boot. With everything cleaned out and replaced with new parts, the brake is working properly again, so good job boys.
Meanwhile, electrical guru Roy is still attacking the cabin intercom system.
There he is, discussing matters outside the plane with Glen. These boxes look like ww2 boxes on the outside, but inside, they are filled with circuit boards. Very little documentation in the files on this installation, which predates us all. Roy is having to do a good deal of reverse engineering to figure out how to improve the functioning of this thing.
There's the man, back at his bench. He'll get to the bottom of it all right.
There was a golf tournament in Indy this week, and this sort of event always brings the interesting transient airport-neighbors ...
Yes, the MetLife blimp, one of a number of blimps who make Mount Comfort Airport their home from time to time thoughout the year. You would think, with these many blimps blowing through periodically, that one of them would eventually give IndyJen a ride, but noooo.
Anyhow, the plane and a full load of airshow crew launched yesterday evening for Y'town. If you're in the vicinity, drop in on that show and say hi to the Hot Stuff crew!
They're getting pics for me, and I expect stories as well, as this is the first "away" show for some of the crew. A fresh perspective always leads to good stories! I'll pass 'em on as soon as I've got 'em.
till next time,
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) appears to be unarmed. Training ship, perhaps?
