I bought a FWF package from a guy to get my Experimental up and going. It had a lot of hours on it when I got it. I put about 20 hours on my bird when it developed a leak. I was going to rebuild it but I found a smoking deal on another one that was the 582 Blue Head which is an updated model and it had less than 100 hours on it. The guy I bought it from put pistons and rings in it and replaced all the seals so it's essentially a zero time engine. I put about 20 hours into my plane this weekend performing the engine swap. I had to change the reduction drive over which took a while and I also spent a lot of time redoing wiring and fuel lines. It's a much cleaner set up now. Anyways all that's left is to the fill the radiator and then I should be able to fire it up this evening. Pretty exciting firing a new motor for the first time. The new engine has way more compression than the old one so I'm hoping it'll have more power too. I will have only had the plane down for less than a week..not too shabby. I should also mention that I did this for under 2K and I did all the work myself in my garage at home Gotta love exeperimentals!! Anyone else done any major maintenance yet this winter??

Where are you in Solano? Close to the Base I assume. Come up to Jackson/Westover sometime and let's go fly! There are several Rans S-7's and some S-6's, along with the smattering of Glastars, Kitfoxes. And some of those certified jobbies too.

Looks like a sweet destination. I have to put 23 more hours on my bird in Phase I before I can go that far but the hours are coming off pretty quickly.

Here is a couple pics for you certified guys to laugh at.

The old engine sitting next to the new one before the gearbox swap



Gotta love the bare two stroke.. not much to them



Back on the plane



My workshop for this project...the garage

I just looked at this site again for the first time in a while. You have the inverted mounted Rotax. Do you need to purge air at the water pump to remove the airlock since the pump is no longer the lowest point on the cooling system? More than a few have been burned up in less than a minute because the pump is air locked after the entire cooling system has been drained and then refilled. I Hope your reply is "I already did that but thanks". Good luck.

Yes I did... Thanks! There is also a special procedure for bleeding the Rotary Valve reservoir when it's inverted. The rotary valve shaft spins the water pump along with the rotary valve and uses a small reservoir to keep it lubricated. Here's a shot of the finished product.

Very clean arrangement. I like the location of the radiator. I originally had the silver top 582 in my Zenair CH 701 ( inverted installation also for prop clearance). It had water pump seal problems and a "B" gearbox (solid coupling) which eventually caused Rotax to issue the 300 hr crankshaft recommendation. I swapped engines out also but went to a Simonini Victor 2 which took half the fuel. I liked the engine and 701 but sold the plane in 2006 for my present project. The Blue Top 582 is a much improved engine over the silver one with better seals on the pump and the Blue Tops normally drives a C gearbox with internal cushions. It is much better on the crankshaft life because of the cushioned coupling drive which limits vibrations to the crank .

I am also passing along some information that I found useful about tuning your engine. It is from Tom Oelnik and is excellent.

http://www.ultralightnews.com/enginetro ... parrow.htm

I like your plane

Happy Thanksgiving