ENGINE WORK  August, 2007

Aug 8 - Randy Crothers has gotten his STi flying!  He's done a couple test flights.  He reports quite marginal cooling, although he says he's seeing the problem more on the oil cooling side, rather than the water, similar to reports I've gotten from H6 users.  He also says his engine is VERY hard to start when cold.  He has to crank it in short bursts about 30 times before it will start.  Jan is still recommending adding a switch to ground out a couple injector leads to provide a crude primer circuit.  Randy doesn't like the sound of something that klugey any more than the rest of us do, but I guess he's going to do it.  Mine starts slightly hard, but nothing like what Randy is experiencing.

Aug 11 - did an engine test run, to check oxy sensor not getting power, to see if that affects starting.  I realized I am no longer getting power to the oxy sensor at startup, until I switch on the Avionics Master, after I added the oxy sensor to the inline fuse circuit for the starter, so it has power at startup.  Changed EIS low oil pressure warning to 44 psi  1.0 hr

Aug 12 - rewired oxy sensor relay power to same inline fuse as starter solenoid.  1.75 hr

Aug 17 - Jan is recommending (and selling) a 4" linear actuator for the cowl flaps.  Another Eggenfellner user was selling his, so I bought it.  Received it today.  It's quite heavy; adds several more pounds to the front of the plane - just great.  I also found out that the Gen 3 PSRU Jan is insisting we buy weighs an incredible 13 pounds more than the Gen 2.  Just what we need - even more weight up front on a FWF package that's already so overweight we have to put the batteries in the back.  Of course, Eggenfellner dances around the weight issue and claims it's comparable to Lycoming, but Lycomings don't need weight in the back to get proper W&B.  We're also finding out that the MT prop Eggenfellner sold us with this package is not rated for the HP the STi is putting out, especially with the Gen 3 PSRU.   Again, Jan just dances around that question.  And there's also the fact that the Gen 3 PSRU greatly overspeeds the supercharger.  John Moody in Australia is working on a solution for that problem.  Jan is so uncooperative, he won't even give us any info on where he got the supercharger sprocket or how it's mounted to the supercharger.

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