- Adjusted elevator push rod for better roll trim.
- Significantly opened up the path for cowling discharge air.
- Discovered air leak around #2 cylinder. Will repair after next test flight.
- Took care of fuel line chafing on cowl.
- Plumbed in an airspeed indicator to measure cowling pressure differential.
- Hooked up mixture meter so I can observe it in flight. I will continually be checking the fuel/air ration to fine tune the EC3 mixture mapping.
Regarding item # 5 above. There are a lot of factors about engine cooling and there are several great articles out there if you are willing to search for them.
One of the fundamental things to check for is to make sure that you have an adequate pressure differential between the top of the engine, compared to the bottom of the engine. The engineers like to refer to this as inches of water, as seen in a manometer. Let's say you had no baffling at all. In that case there would be zero pressure differential and zero inches of water.
Lycoming wants to see between 5 1/2 & 6 1/2 inches of water. Since rigging up a manometer can be cumbersome, there is an easier way, using an airspeed indicator. I had an old one laying around so I hooked it up kind of like this (scroll down a bit).
If I don't have enough pressure differential, that should be addressed first. But, if there is enough difference, then I need to go after different things like controlling air flow around a specific component, but first things first.
So looking at the table below, I will be hoping to get about 110 mph on the indicator.
MPH | KNOTS | IN. of H2O | #/IN2 |
30 | 26.1 | .44 | .016 |
40 | 34.8 | .79 | .028 |
50 | 43.5 | 1.23 | .044 |
60 | 52.2 | 1.77 | .064 |
70 | 60.9 | 2.41 | .087 |
80 | 69.6 | 3.15 | .114 |
90 | 78.3 | 3.99 | .144 |
100 | 87.0 | 4.92 | .178 |
110 | 95.7 | 5.95 | .215 |
120 | 104.3 | 7.09 | .2558 |
I'll report my results later.
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