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The first new thing from the annual

This past Friday afternoon I went out to the shop where my plane is currently undergoing its annual inspection. I needed to take the logbooks out there, and I also wanted to take a look at the plane while the cowling was off. While I was there, I spoke with one of the mechanics who was working on a 150 or 152 (I can't remember which) that needed a replacement cylinder. That plane was sitting nose-to-nose with mine, so we also spoke about my plane for a while.

He pointed out something that I'm going to have taken care of. A couple of the fuel hoses do not have that orange fire-retardant sleeve on them that it's a good idea to have. It's not something that will ground the plane, as it was certainly like that at the last annual. It is, however, more than a nice-to-have thing. Fortunately, installation of sleeves on those lines will be relatively easy and inexpensive and I plan to have them do it.

The mechanic also noted that he has considerable time in Musketeers and admires them for their robust construction. I could have talked about plane with him all day, but I needed to go do other things (not to mention my wife was with me and I didn't think she'd want to spend the rest of the day there) so I headed out. As the mechanic had reached a point on the cylinder replacement where he couldn't do anything else at the moment, he said he'd start removing the interior of my plane next.

I'm definitely concerned about the metal found in the oil. In my previous post I mentioned an incident where I accidentally turned the ignition completely off during my run-up and wondered if that could have caused this. After thinking about it some more, I remembered how engines work and realized that it almost certainly didn't. I was thinking that, if the ignition was off, more fuel was in the cylinder when it came back on and caused a brief spike in cylinder pressure. But, of course, if a fuel-air charge is not burned in the cylinder during a cycle, it will be blown out the exhaust valve and not remain in the cylinder. What I experienced was almost certainly a standard and common case of some fuel burning in the exhaust pipe. While it's a relief to realize that, it does mean the actual cause is unknown at this time. So we'll continue with the current plan to check it again after five hours or so.

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