enginehistory.org

rwahlgren · Joined: 15 Aug 2003 Posts: 324

Is that a lock nut? Sounds like they need some loctite.
Amazing how one simple little part can cause so much damage and problems.

jschauer · Joined: 19 May 2004 Posts: 93 Location: Justin, Texas

Video of the flight
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTZ1PPjNnsE

The nuts are held in place with a lock washer. The mechanic failed to torque it properly.

rwahlgren · Joined: 15 Aug 2003 Posts: 324

On aircraft there is so much redundancy, I'm surprized there are not little cotter pins or saftey wire to keep that from happening. But I guess you don't need wire shorting out your rotor.

Darn, I thought that would be a video of the flight engineers panel, and the sounds from there. We need some good videos' of the engine starts and run up. Showing the gages, and stuff like that.

jschauer · Joined: 19 May 2004 Posts: 93 Location: Justin, Texas

We do have some video of what you want but I need some time to get it edited. The in flight is quite blurry.

rwahlgren · Joined: 15 Aug 2003 Posts: 324

Wanted to ask. Do you folks have a prelube system for those engines on FiFi?

jschauer · Joined: 19 May 2004 Posts: 93 Location: Justin, Texas

Yes we have a pre-oil system. Each engine nacelle has a propeller feathering pump that we use as a pre-oil pump. It works great. We pre-oil for about 15 seconds and then crank the engine over for the next 15 seconds. This accomplishes two things, one, it checks the engine for hydraulic lock and two, it helps distribute the oil inside the engine.

We flew her at the CAF show this past weekend and she performed flawlessly. We had about 10 or more flights in the course of three days.

jschauer · Joined: 19 May 2004 Posts: 93 Location: Justin, Texas

Video of the first flight and from about three weeks ago.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1pKDmWKYY0

jschauer · Joined: 19 May 2004 Posts: 93 Location: Justin, Texas

Full power fly-by. 280 mph, indicated.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kft5__Yys3E

jschauer · Joined: 19 May 2004 Posts: 93 Location: Justin, Texas

We've had a great fall tour, and the B-29 is at Addison airport (it's new home), north of Dallas, for it's winter maintenance. In early December we will fly her out to Midland, Texas for a few days and then return to Addison. Except for some magneto problems, the plane and engines have worked flawlessly. We've flown her in 90 degree F + temperatures and have never seen any cylinder head temps above 200 degrees C including sitting on the ground for 1/2 hour with the engines running, in those temperatures.

rwahlgren · Joined: 15 Aug 2003 Posts: 324

I think FiFi has a bad engine. Any news on that?

jschauer · Joined: 19 May 2004 Posts: 93 Location: Justin, Texas

I won't go into the details, I'm not at liberty to say but the engine had a internal failure that's never been seen before. The engine has been repaired and should be reinstalled in a few weeks. We are also raising money to have a fifth (spare) engine built up.

rwahlgren · Joined: 15 Aug 2003 Posts: 324

jschauer · Joined: 19 May 2004 Posts: 93 Location: Justin, Texas

Sorry for the delay, I've been quite busy in my personal life.

The accessory drive shaft failed on the #2 engine in flight. This is the same engine we had a severe back-fire during the second (with the new engines) flight due to the distributor rotor coming loose changing the timing. The best Anderson Aeromotive can figure is that the shaft was cracked during this backfire and it finally failed during the flight 100+ hours later. When the shaft broke we lost the tachometer, oil pressure, internal supercharger, basically everything aft of the cylinders. Anderson repaired the engine and we have over 450 hours on the new engines with this one major problem. The # 3 engine was changed a few weeks ago with a new spare engine. The reason for this is to rotate the engines so we won't have all 4 engines due overhaul at the same time. The old #3 engine will go to Anderson for any repairs that may be necessary and shipped back to use as a spare.