When I bought my '78 Turbo Lance in '04 it was clear from all the posts on this forum that it would be a good investment to have an engine analyzer installed. I bought an UBG-16 with 6 EGT and 6 CHT probes. Analyzer worked fine and gave me the ability to run the engine within the limits.
This years annual revealed that 2 cylinders failed the leak test due to worn valve guides, also the barrel walls looked glazed.
I did bite the bullet and did a complete top overhaul.
On my second flight after the overhaul last Sunday ( trip from France ) 5 hours on the tach, at take-off I noticed that the CHT and EGT of cylinder # 1 went sky-high. I was just airborne and there was no runway left to put her down again. I also needed to clear some trees and the field was surrounded by mountains.
The EGT went to 1800 F and CHT to 475 before I could throttle back and level off. I set at 24 - 2400 and started to lean. EGT and CHT of the other 5 cylinders went up and the #1 went down. I circled the field to see if I could manage the temperatures and fly safely home. It became clear that #1 was running very lean. I did not want to take the risk of landing, not able to solve the problem and had to take-off again, so I decided to fly her home ( 3 hours flight ). I was able to keep the temps under control, however the engine was running a bit rough due to the # 1 running very lean, but brought the plane and family safely home.
Moral of the story is that when i did not had the engine analyzer, I would have instantly fried my new cylinder or even catastrophically failed this cylinder in flight with an emergency landing as a result, which was, looking at the terrain, maybe not survivable,
So thanks to the engine analyzer, and this forum I'm able to fly another day.
I pulled the cowling yesterday to look for a leak in the intake system, but could not find anything. Intake leaks are a common cause of lean running. Then took out the injector, and found some small fouling in the injector. Cleaned the injector, did a test run and engine was running fine again.
Jeroen van Brakel
Netherlands
N21899
PA-32RT-300T
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/07/2008 01:43AM by jeroen.
