overheating... again

[dholly 718]

Sounds like you got it out ok, care to recount the experience for the curious?

[akflyer 1427]

Sounds like you got it out ok, care to recount the experience for the curious?

Well it was not as bad as I thought, and I am still not sure exactly what the culprit was. I loaded up a bunch of tools and gear and flew into a strip close by in my brothers pacer, then tranfered over to a guys super cub on ski's. We flew into the pond and went to work on it. I brought a coolant system tester with me, but it was so cold, the pump would not work so I popped the head off and changed out the head gaskets. The piston wash looked good and there was no scoring on the jugs or pistons so I put it back together, burped the coolant system and put a new radiator cap on it.

The damage to the float was not done by an animal. The best I can figure is the way it was parked, after it frozen down to the tundra we got a big wind storm (80-120) and it was hitting the plane from the left side. The action of the wid getting under that wing and trying to flip the plane ripped the seam out on the zipper and then ripped the fabric up pretty good. I deflated the bladder and stuffed it back inside the float and stitched it up best as I could with some cordage. While I was doing this, the 78 yr old guy that flew me into the pond was busy scraping ice off the wings and tail.

I did a good run up and all seemed well so I ran it up and down the pond a few times to try and scrub some of the frozen grasses off the bottom of the float cause the best I could get initially was about 15 MPH at full power. After a half dozen runs up and down the pond I had a warm fuzzy that the engine was not going to over heat or blow coolant out so I lined up and blasted out of there. A couple turns around the pond gaining altitude showed all systems in the green so I set a course to the lodge and hoped for the best. It was only 11.6 miles away and I had lots of frozen lakes and rivers to set down on if needed. All was well and I flew it straight in to the lodge with about 10 minutes to spare before it got dark on me.

Next morning the temps had gone from -11 when I landed to 28 above so I went out and put the coolant system tester on it. It held 14 PSIG for 4 hrs so I knew the system was good. We spent a few days cutting firewood for the lodge then I had my brother fly up to get the wife and he flew her home in his plane, and escorted me home. All temps were solid in the green and no more issues manifested so I brought it to Akflyerbobs house, used the bobcat to pick it up and swapped from floats to ski's. I put another 8 hrs on it flying back to the lodge and all around and all seems well.

I have it in the garage at home now and when I get back from work I will tinker with it a bit fixing a few things here and there then head for the lodge again for newyears.

[dholly 718]

Great! Hope you left the Gremlin behind.

[edit] Grrr, darn emoticons, seem to work if you manually remove the "src=" and everything after in the emoticon url.

Edited 7 Dec 2012 by dholly

[C5Engineer 1170]

Glad to hear she is safe and sound where it's warm.

[akflyer 1427]

well guess what.... After 15+ hours of flying the lil sumbitch decided to start pushing fluid out the overflow again.   7000' over 15 miles of open water filled with ice bergs and I see orange fluid start spitting out the cowling and running back across the windscreen.  It was 6 to one half dozen to the other on which shore line I was going to try and make so I kept the nose pointed for home.  The temp never went above 160 till I was on short short final and had to add some power to counteract the gusty cross wind at the airport.  I was puckered up for the 25 minutes I was flying with a little trail of anti freeze working its way up the windshield but once I was over dry land again I knew I would be able to set it down on just about any lake I would need to.  I was in constant contact with my brother incase he needed to launch to come get us.

 

I did not have alot of time to mess with the plane once I had it on the trailer and at the house, but I did find that I could blow air and coolant into the recovery bottle, but the coolant would not drain out from the bottle back into the system.  It has clear blue tubing on it and I could see no obstructions in the line, and looking into the tank with a flashlight I could not see any blockage, but no amount of sucking on the hose, or blowing into the recovery tank to pressure it up would get it to drain out into open air.  My guess is that there is little pieces of the flashing plastic from the tank manufacturing process balled up in there but I cant swear to it until I get home and take the dang tank off and see whats in there blocking it.  All I know is that I want my floats back for the open water crossings as I did not have anything close to resembling fun on the ski's when the damn engine started acting up again.

 

Has anyone else has issues with the rotax overflow bottle plugging off and not allowing the coolant back into the system as it cools off??