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Forced landing in Ohio

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bryanmmartin

Joined: 10 Jan 2006
Posts: 1018

Posted: Sun Apr 09, 2006 4:11 pm Post subject: Forced landing in Ohio

I was planning to fly down to Sun 'N' Fun on the first of April in my

Zodiac. The weather that morning in the Detroit area was crappy so I waited

around until noon. At that time there was a 2000 foot overcast with 3000

foot tops and it had quit raining. The weather south of Ohio was reported as

clear so I decided to take off and see. I flew under the Detroit class B at

about 1500 feet and started to see some breaks in the overcast.



An hour into the flight I was just southeast of the Toledo class C when the

engine suddenly started shaking and lost about 600 RPM. I was about 5 miles

north of Wood County Airport (1G0) so I pulled the throttle and started

gliding towards the airport. All my guages were in the green and the engine

stayed running but very rough. When I got down to about 200 feet above the

ground with nothing but plowed fields and a crowded freeway below me I

realized I wasn't going to be able to glide to the airport. The engine was

still making power so I shoved the throttle back in and managed to get about

200 feet per minute climb rate out of it. It was enough to get me lined up

on runway 18 with a 15 knot crosswind directly from the west. I called up

the unicom and anounced my intentions and then made a safe landing.



After I taxied up to the terminal, I shut it down and got out and started

looking for the trouble. Everything looked OK from the outside of the

engine. No oil or coolant leaks and no appearant damage. I didn't have

enough tools with me to do muc troubleshooting so I barrowed the courtesy

car to go down to the store to buy a spark plug wrench. I finally determined

that I had no compression on the number 1 cylinder and when I pulled that

plug, there was impact damage to the electrode. My preliminary determination

was some sort of valve train failure. Since I couldn't do much to fix the

problem right then and it wasn't fit to fly home, I tied it down for the

night and called to reserve a rental car.



The folks at Wood County treated me very well they even offered to put the

plane in a hangar for the night. One of the instructors was giving a lesson

that day and gave me a ride up to Toledo Express Airport so I could pick up

my rental, saving me the expense of a taxi ride.



I drove the rental home that night and the next day drove up to Midland to

get my trailer and my dad and brother to help me recover the airplane. We

then drove down to Bowling Green to tear down the plane for the haul back

home. The people at the airport let me use put the plane in a hangar to

dissasemble it for the trip back. It's a good thing they did, it was pouring

down rain by the time we got done loading in the trailer. We got the plane

back to my hangar at Ray and got the rental returned to the local depot and

got back to Midland at about 2 AM. Monday evening, I decided to use some of

my frequent flyer miles to complete the trip to Lakeland and let the

airplane wait until I got back.



Today I finally got to my hangar to start tearing down the engine to see

what went wrong. I heard stories about valve guide failures in some of the

EA81 engines so I thought I might find the same thing with mine. It turns

out that the problem wasn't the valve guides. A big chunk of the intake

valve in the number 1 cylinder broke off and did mayhem inside the engine.

The piston had a bunch of holes in it and had several cracks clear across

the face of the piston. The piston skirt must also be all broken up because

you can rock the piston back and forth in the cylinder. There also seems to

be some collateral damage to the intake valve in the number 3 cylinder,

probably by bits of metal getting blown back into the intake manifold. Our

resident engine expert took a look at the valve and decided that it was a

fatigue failure possibly caused by a slight misalignment of the valve. There

is some evidence that the valve was hitting harder on one side of the port

than the other. I've put 145 hours on the engiine since I bought from

Stratus.



I plan on pulling off the other head to check it and will probably send both

of them off to RAM for rebuild.

-- 

Bryan Martin

N61BM, CH 601 XL, Stratus Subaru.

_________________
--
Bryan Martin
N61BM, CH 601 XL, Stratus Subaru.
do not archive.

frank.hinde(at)hp.com
Guest

Posted: Sun Apr 09, 2006 4:34 pm Post subject: Forced landing in Ohio

Bryan....Glad you made it down OK!



Well we can't put this one down to valve guide slippage but if it was

misalignment it still points to unacceptable work by the shop that

Stratus uses to do its cylinder head work.



Of course this is conjecture based on the message below.



Sounds like you managed the situation well except it might have been

prudent to not let the altitude decay so much before wringing what power

you could out of the motor. I realise of course that engine performance

decreases with altitude but would suggest giving it all she could would

be better done at 2000 feet rather than 200. When you rebuild this

engine (or more to the point when RAM DOES ALL THE MACHINING WORK ON

YOUR REPLACEMENT ENGINE BLOCK(if that's whats required)) you will find

it's a pretty cheap engine compared to the damage that could have been

caused if your engine did not make any power at 200 feet.



When my last valve guide failure happened I was fourtunate to be able to

thrash it up to 4000 feet before I attempted to cross some very

unhospitible terrain, lakes, town etc...So I could pretty much glide to

the runway. 



Bryan, if your smart there is no "probably" about send the other head to

Ram...YOU MUST send both to RAM. With respect you don't know if Stratus

uses old valves or if they are new ones. You also have no idea if the

workmanship in the other head is any better than the one that

failed...Please don't even think of running the other head without RAM's

stepped valve guide conversion, new springs and new SS valves.



Fourtunatly Once Ram has sorted the heads the motor should be very

reliable. If the bore is scored though, also have RAM rebore this (or a

another core block) because they (as far as I know) are the only ones

using a boring plate that takes account of the distortion from torquing

the heads bolts which apparently is significant.

d3dw(at)msn.com
Guest

Posted: Sun Apr 09, 2006 5:25 pm Post subject: Forced landing in Ohio

Bryan,

   Frank's advice is good.



 The same thing happened to me at 4000 ft. One cylinder quit due to the spark plug gap being closed due to a blow from a chunk...of the valve guide.



MY POINT though is that I got a replacement cylinder from Mikel, free of charge, but it failed too from the same problem...loose valve guides that were inappropriately installed...with knurling just like the original failure.

I think he may use a better method now, but why take the chance. Do it right now is my advice.  don walker

  ---

frank.hinde(at)hp.com
Guest

Posted: Sun Apr 09, 2006 6:45 pm Post subject: Forced landing in Ohio

I believe the "better method" that Stratus uses is a circlip on a

standard sized valve guide...And that was the setup I had on my last

failure...In other words it failed just like the rest of them.



They may have upgraded their methods since my last failure but to be

quite blunt Ron Carr and I walked through the process he would use, the

parts he would supply and he is the only rebuilder I would feel

comfortable has the required level of knowledge and access to CNC

machine tools to make the required parts for a safe engine.



In the grand scheme of things the cost is peanuts compared with the

potential alternative.



Frank



1500 bucks spent on multiple cylinder head rebuilds! But I love my

engine now.



--

frank.hinde(at)hp.com
Guest

Posted: Sun Apr 09, 2006 6:47 pm Post subject: Forced landing in Ohio

Oh incidently....I would ask RAM to proveide standard sized valves

rather than the oversize he normally does...Reason being you will want

to check your carb jet sizes, mine needed to be upsized quite a bit...If

you do have the oversized valve guides be prepared for some time to size

the carb jets (Bing has a manual on how to do it),...Someone else may

have the jet sizes they used with the RAM larger valves...Might save

some time...



Frank

larry(at)macsmachine.com
Guest

Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2006 5:56 am Post subject: Forced landing in Ohio

Bryan,

Sorry to read of your engine problems.  I've attached a record of the 

jetting and setup for my Stratus with Ram

Performance heads, larger valves, springs etc.  Definitely worth the 

effort to have Ram do your heads.

 I would disagree with Frank on the valves, because the larger valves 

Ram uses are better material and the jet

sizes are known and proven for this setup.  I have a 2.76 mid-range jet, 

a 176 main jet, the circlip on my

jet needle (with 2 identity rings) on the third notch from the top, and 

are using the original foam filters to maintain

a restricted flow of air for proper mixture and exhaust gas 

temperatures.  These are from 1350 to 1450 degrees. 

I'm going to try a 178 main jet to reduce the full throttle EGTs by 25 

to 50-degrees F.  Cruise at 4600 rpm has

EGTs in level flight at about 1375-deg F. 

The Ram performance heads sound a little better and needs these jets to 

compensate for more airflow.  The

larger valves and heavier springs, with better porting increases 

performance a bit and is very worth while.



If I can be of any further assist, please just ask.



Larry McFarland

Bryan Martin wrote:



 	  Quote: 	
		  



I was planning to fly down to Sun 'N' Fun on the first of April in my

Zodiac. The weather that morning in the Detroit area was crappy so I waited

around until noon. At that time there was a 2000 foot overcast with 3000

foot tops and it had quit raining. The weather south of Ohio was reported as

clear so I decided to take off and see. I flew under the Detroit class B at

about 1500 feet and started to see some breaks in the overcast.



An hour into the flight I was just southeast of the Toledo class C when the

engine suddenly started shaking and lost about 600 RPM. I was about 5 miles

north of Wood County Airport (1G0) so I pulled the throttle and started

gliding towards the airport. All my guages were in the green and the engine

stayed running but very rough. When I got down to about 200 feet above the

ground with nothing but plowed fields and a crowded freeway below me I

realized I wasn't going to be able to glide to the airport. The engine was

still making power so I shoved the throttle back in and managed to get about

200 feet per minute climb rate out of it. It was enough to get me lined up

on runway 18 with a 15 knot crosswind directly from the west. I called up

the unicom and anounced my intentions and then made a safe landing.



After I taxied up to the terminal, I shut it down and got out and started

looking for the trouble. Everything looked OK from the outside of the

engine. No oil or coolant leaks and no appearant damage. I didn't have

enough tools with me to do muc troubleshooting so I barrowed the courtesy

car to go down to the store to buy a spark plug wrench. I finally determined

that I had no compression on the number 1 cylinder and when I pulled that

plug, there was impact damage to the electrode. My preliminary determination

was some sort of valve train failure. Since I couldn't do much to fix the

problem right then and it wasn't fit to fly home, I tied it down for the

night and called to reserve a rental car.



The folks at Wood County treated me very well they even offered to put the

plane in a hangar for the night. One of the instructors was giving a lesson

that day and gave me a ride up to Toledo Express Airport so I could pick up

my rental, saving me the expense of a taxi ride.



I drove the rental home that night and the next day drove up to Midland to

get my trailer and my dad and brother to help me recover the airplane. We

then drove down to Bowling Green to tear down the plane for the haul back

home. The people at the airport let me use put the plane in a hangar to

dissasemble it for the trip back. It's a good thing they did, it was pouring

down rain by the time we got done loading in the trailer. We got the plane

back to my hangar at Ray and got the rental returned to the local depot and

got back to Midland at about 2 AM. Monday evening, I decided to use some of

my frequent flyer miles to complete the trip to Lakeland and let the

airplane wait until I got back.



Today I finally got to my hangar to start tearing down the engine to see

what went wrong. I heard stories about valve guide failures in some of the

EA81 engines so I thought I might find the same thing with mine. It turns

out that the problem wasn't the valve guides. A big chunk of the intake

valve in the number 1 cylinder broke off and did mayhem inside the engine.

The piston had a bunch of holes in it and had several cracks clear across

the face of the piston. The piston skirt must also be all broken up because

you can rock the piston back and forth in the cylinder. There also seems to

be some collateral damage to the intake valve in the number 3 cylinder,

probably by bits of metal getting blown back into the intake manifold. Our

resident engine expert took a look at the valve and decided that it was a

fatigue failure possibly caused by a slight misalignment of the valve. There

is some evidence that the valve was hitting harder on one side of the port

than the other. I've put 145 hours on the engiine since I bought from

Stratus.



I plan on pulling off the other head to check it and will probably send both

of them off to RAM for rebuild.

frank.hinde(at)hp.com
Guest

Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2006 6:17 am Post subject: Forced landing in Ohio

Ya I would have to agree with this posistion Larry, as you wrote down

your jet sizes (which I should have done too save folks a bunch of work)

then the better material and proven longevity of the Ram setup makes the

larger valves worthwile...Why change a good thing even if I did not

detect any performance increase. 



Incidently, even though I did not write down my jet sizes I am almost

sure I ended up with a 180 main jet so you might order two sizes while

your in the ordering mood. I found that Bing would accept returns minus

a 10% restocking fee.



Incidently....with the single valve spring it sure is nice to be able to

see all those shiny Phospher bronze guides sitting in the correct place

when one ajusts the valve clearance...



Cheers



Frank 



 I would disagree with Frank on the valves, because the larger valves

Ram uses are better material and the jet sizes are known and proven for

this setup.  I have a 2.76 mid-range jet, a 176 main jet, the circlip on

my jet needle (with 2 identity rings) on the third notch from the top,

and are using the original foam filters to maintain a restricted flow of

air for proper mixture and exhaust gas temperatures.  These are from

1350 to 1450 degrees. 

I'm going to try a 178 main jet to reduce the full throttle EGTs by 25

to 50-degrees F.  Cruise at 4600 rpm has EGTs in level flight at about

1375-deg F. 

The Ram performance heads sound a little better and needs these jets to

compensate for more airflow.  The larger valves and heavier springs,

with better porting increases performance a bit and is very worth while.

frank.hinde(at)hp.com
Guest

Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2006 11:34 am Post subject: Forced landing in Ohio

Hey Bryan,



Out of interest, were the guides still in position and not broken...Just

wondering if the guide slipped and caused the valve to fail, maybe by

catching a chunk under the seat or between piston and valve head? 



Just a thought...



Frank



Do not archive

I was planning to fly down to Sun 'N' Fun on the first of April in my

Zodiac. The weather that morning in the Detroit area was crappy so I

waited around until noon. At that time there was a 2000

bryanmmartin

Joined: 10 Jan 2006
Posts: 1018

Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2006 11:59 am Post subject: Forced landing in Ohio

The valve guides all seem to be intact and in their proper position. The

valve doesn't have any play in the guide.

-- 

Bryan Martin

N61BM, CH 601 XL, Stratus Subaru.



on 4/10/06 3:34 PM, Hinde, Frank George (Corvallis) at frank.hinde(at)hp.com

wrote:



 	  Quote: 	
		   

 <frank.hinde(at)hp.com>

 

 Hey Bryan,

 

 Out of interest, were the guides still in position and not broken...Just

 wondering if the guide slipped and caused the valve to fail, maybe by

 catching a chunk under the seat or between piston and valve head?

 

 Just a thought...

 

 Frank

_________________
--
Bryan Martin
N61BM, CH 601 XL, Stratus Subaru.
do not archive.

jpkarnes2000(at)msn.com
Guest

Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2006 12:02 pm Post subject: Forced landing in Ohio

frank.hinde(at)hp.com
Guest

Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2006 12:04 pm Post subject: Forced landing in Ohio

I wonder if Mykal replaced the guides or if they are the original from

Subaru...What are they made of?...Bronze or cast iron?



Frank 



--

bryanmmartin

Joined: 10 Jan 2006
Posts: 1018

Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2006 12:11 pm Post subject: Forced landing in Ohio

They appear to be bronze, they are gold colored.

-- 

Bryan Martin

N61BM, CH 601 XL, Stratus Subaru.

do not archive.

on 4/10/06 4:03 PM, Hinde, Frank George (Corvallis) at frank.hinde(at)hp.com

wrote:



[quote] 

 <frank.hinde(at)hp.com>

 

 I wonder if Mykal replaced the guides or if they are the original from

 Subaru...What are they made of?...Bronze or cast iron?

 

 Frank 

 

 --

_________________
--
Bryan Martin
N61BM, CH 601 XL, Stratus Subaru.
do not archive.

frank.hinde(at)hp.com
Guest

Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2006 12:18 pm Post subject: Forced landing in Ohio

Then they have definatly been replaced by Stratus. When you send them to

Ram, just ask him to have a quick look and tell you why he thinks the

valve might have failed, before he pops the guides out of course.



Frank 



--

jpkarnes2000(at)msn.com
Guest

Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2006 6:12 pm Post subject: Forced landing in Ohio

After an overheating incident in 2002 and resulting blown head gaskets, I had the engine rebuilt by Mykal.   I have been flying since then with the belief that the valve guides were trustworthy since they were redone during the rebuild.  After the current discussion, I have decided to not fly until the valve guides are installed by RAM.  Thanks, guys, for the advice and support!=0D=0A=0D=0AJohn Karnes=0D=0AZenith 601 HDS=0D=0ASuquamish, WA

frank.hinde(at)hp.com
Guest

Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2006 8:50 pm Post subject: Forced landing in Ohio

Good for you John!



One of my so called improved circlipped phospher bronze guides failed

just like the other two failures that Stratus did! 



Its amazing the excuses I got as to why that happened...."You over

heated it!"...no I didn't and even if I did so what?...Guides should

still NEVER come out....You ran both ignitions at the same time and the

two ignitions interferred with each other!....Oh really?....fuzzy logic

if ever I herd it..Yeah and so what?....The Moon is made of green cheese

too but ...OH ok that was my addition.



I kid you not the first two reasons were bonafide excuses I got from

Mykal as to why it was my fault the guides fell out.



If anyone else is reading this and is still driving around the sky

without RAM heads...well you're a braver man than I am!



All of this is just my humble (not) opinion having researched and made

my own valve guides and seats for my old air cooled Norton...guides

never fell out of that motor for sure and they won't out of a RAM head

either!



Frank



--

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