leadsledfan
New member
I made my way to the hangar yesterday to do some needed maintenance on my Cruisemaster.
I had a seemingly random miss on cylinder 4, that seemed to only happen at low power and on cold plugs. I searched through the logbooks, but could not find the last time the plugs were actually replaced. So it seemed prudent to swap them out.
I followed the advice of those on this page, as well as some bonanza folks and switched to Tempest plugs instead of continental due to the resistor issue and the fact that it saved me $5 a plug.
Install went well, much easier than my Franklin, especially applying the 1/4 turn removal trick to prevent the helicoils from backing out.
I then decided to tackle the rocker cover gaskets, some of which had obviously been leaking. I found out fairly quickly that this requires the removal of the cowl, but luckily, my cowl has been split, so this isn't a huge issue. Apparently though, it was a huge issue for some previous mechanics because I found some interesting gaskets. The passenger side rocker covers for cylinders 1-3-5 are easy to access and all had silicone style gaskets. The rocker covers for cylinders 4-6 are also easy to access and had red paper gaskets in OK shape. The rocker cover for cylinder 2 is covered by the nose bowl, and after removing the cowl, I discovered that it had a gray paper gasket that was broken in several places. Probably original to the engine overhaul. I guess I just don't understand why someone would go through the trouble of installing silicone gaskets on one side only, and then ignore cylinder 2 just because it requires cowl removal. Seems like laziness to me. Oh well, I got them all replaced, which should help with the oil leakage.
While I had the cowl off, I noticed that my engine baffling is in pretty sorry shape. So that will probably be my next project. It seems that the baffling was almost an afterthought, and it doesn't seem very efficient or effective. Is it possible to fashion baffling that seals vertically to the top of the cowl instead of folding over the rocker covers to seal against the cowl doors? This is what I have seen on most experimentals, and seems to work well for them.
Another fun day of airplanes! Maybe I will get to fly mine soon!
I had a seemingly random miss on cylinder 4, that seemed to only happen at low power and on cold plugs. I searched through the logbooks, but could not find the last time the plugs were actually replaced. So it seemed prudent to swap them out.
I followed the advice of those on this page, as well as some bonanza folks and switched to Tempest plugs instead of continental due to the resistor issue and the fact that it saved me $5 a plug.
Install went well, much easier than my Franklin, especially applying the 1/4 turn removal trick to prevent the helicoils from backing out.
I then decided to tackle the rocker cover gaskets, some of which had obviously been leaking. I found out fairly quickly that this requires the removal of the cowl, but luckily, my cowl has been split, so this isn't a huge issue. Apparently though, it was a huge issue for some previous mechanics because I found some interesting gaskets. The passenger side rocker covers for cylinders 1-3-5 are easy to access and all had silicone style gaskets. The rocker covers for cylinders 4-6 are also easy to access and had red paper gaskets in OK shape. The rocker cover for cylinder 2 is covered by the nose bowl, and after removing the cowl, I discovered that it had a gray paper gasket that was broken in several places. Probably original to the engine overhaul. I guess I just don't understand why someone would go through the trouble of installing silicone gaskets on one side only, and then ignore cylinder 2 just because it requires cowl removal. Seems like laziness to me. Oh well, I got them all replaced, which should help with the oil leakage.
While I had the cowl off, I noticed that my engine baffling is in pretty sorry shape. So that will probably be my next project. It seems that the baffling was almost an afterthought, and it doesn't seem very efficient or effective. Is it possible to fashion baffling that seals vertically to the top of the cowl instead of folding over the rocker covers to seal against the cowl doors? This is what I have seen on most experimentals, and seems to work well for them.
Another fun day of airplanes! Maybe I will get to fly mine soon!