Holy shit....you failed to touch down on a three quarter of a mile long runway. Then realized your cooker quit...after you missed.. Then you pull out some chuck Yeager shit and nurse it back around. Amazing!!

We see this one go wrong way too many times here at Merrill. Glad that worked out for ya.

Straight tail- No way that blew off from shock cooling. The crack must have been there for a while and grew and grew and grew just a matter of time. That time just happened to be on a go around at Johnson Creek.

Now remember flyers with Continental 470, 520, 550 engines ALWAYS bubble check your cylinders during compression check even if your cylinder is not subject to an AD. Pretty rare to find one but even i have found a few cracked heads on NON AD cylinders doing the bubble check.

I am not familiar with the bubble check. Would you pump the cylinder up to 80 psi then spray a soap and water type solution around the head to cylinder joint and watch for bubbles? Or is it something else?

The bubble check is required by at least the ECI AD. It was also outlined in a Continental service bulletin and applies to all Continental engines SB96-12.

It does work to leave the piston at the top of the stroke as well. I use a spray bottle with a little bit of dawn and water. I have also found cracks around the spark plug hole, and fuel injector this way.

http://www.tcmlink.com/pdf2/SB96-12.pdf

C. LEAK CHECK
Many repair stations have already made this simple test part of their routine cylinder
compression check. This check serves as an identifier for conditions which may not be
detectable by visual inspection and also serves as a back-up for conditions which maybe
difficult to detect because of visual limitations. It can be accomplished in a relatively short
amount of time and can identify conditions affecting airworthiness.

1. With the compression tester connected, apply 5 PSI to the cylinder.
2. Position the piston as close to bottom dead center on the compression stroke as possible,
ensuring that the intake valve remains closed to allow the cylinder to hold pressure.
WARNING
IT WILL BE NECESSARY TO HOLD THE PROPELLER STATIONARY WHILE
PRESSURE IS APPLIED TO THE CYLINDER. USE EXTREME CAUTION TO
PREVENT INJURY TO PERSONNEL OR DAMAGE TO EQUIPMENT.
3. Increase the pressure slowly to a maximum value of 80 PSI. Saturate the entire cylinder
assembly with a soap and water solution.
4. Inspect the complete cylinder for leakage. Leakage will be indicated by an accumulation of
bubbles.
5. After complete cylinder inspection, relieve cylinder pressure and remove compression tester.
6. Perform this inspection on each cylinder.
ANY CYLINDER THAT EXHIBITS EXTERNAL LEAKAGE FROM THE HEAD OR BARREL
STRUCTURE MUST BE REPLACED PRIOR TO FURTHER ENGINE OPERATION.

are continentals more prone to this type of failure? i haven't heard of this being done on a lycoming but that is not saying a lot.

It's amazing all the crap you can do when you really HAVE to. Great job!

Snake wrote:Holy shit....you failed to touch down on a three quarter of a mile long runway. Then realized your cooker quit...after you missed.. Then you pull out some chuck Yeager shit and nurse it back around. Amazing!!

That is weird.

Thanks for the bubble test info PAMR MX

Snake wrote:Holy shit....you failed to touch down on a three quarter of a mile long runway. Then realized your cooker quit...after you missed.. Then you pull out some chuck Yeager shit and nurse it back around. Amazing!!

Nice Drive-By on post #4

CSS and I had flown up together. We landed ahead of him and unfortunately were looking north when it happened. He did a great job of flying the plane and resisting the short arm syndrome. We too were glad it didn't happen on departure the next morning.

This was in the plane I used to fly. Ever since this engine was overhauled by a place in BTF, seems like it has had nothing but problems. The engine is a mid-time engine (700ish hours or so I believe) and as far as I know does not have ECI cylinders.

SixTwoLeemer wrote:

Snake wrote:Holy shit....you failed to touch down on a three quarter of a mile long runway. Then realized your cooker quit...after you missed.. Then you pull out some chuck Yeager shit and nurse it back around. Amazing!!

Nice Drive-By on post #4

No kidding. Guess some people have never goofed an approach. Sure would be nice to be them!

Snake wrote:Holy shit....you failed to touch down on a three quarter of a mile long runway. Then realized your cooker quit...after you missed.. Then you pull out some chuck Yeager shit and nurse it back around. Amazing!!

Ouch - this seems a bit harsh... Maybe retract the fangs there, Snake? Seems to me he did the right thing by going around, then it was wrong place, wrong time, but with a good outcome.

In over 16,000 hours of flying, I've had four engine failures and two precautionary shutdowns. Funny thing is, my "cookers" quit with no warning, too. Still in one piece. Still can't predict when it's going to happen. I guess I'm still working on that.

Snake wrote:Holy shit....you failed to touch down on a three quarter of a mile long runway. Then realized your cooker quit...after you missed.. Then you pull out some chuck Yeager shit and nurse it back around. Amazing!!

One of the main reasons that commercial aviation is so safe is the no blame culture around events / accidents, so that everyone can learn / benefit from them through increased sharing, and prevent them from happening again. It's good to see this kind of sharing happening in GA too (AKA the OP's message).

It's not about the OP proclaiming himself as a highly skilled hero, it's about keeping others safe by sharing information.

I've gone around before. Just saying. Tired of reading about all these guys missing all the time when they shouldn't . Hope it never happens to me. Glad everything worked out.

Guys like the husky pilot give us a bad name. They will ruin it for all of us.

I don't think an honest mistake, missing an approach and having to go around is going to ruin things for everyone. An honest mistake that he admits does not make him a bad guy. I've missed an approach or two in my day, and if that makes me terrible then I guess I better quit flying... Glad to see you've never missed, and if you do I hope you realize you're missing and react in time so as not to ball up a plane in order to keep your never having missed an approach status.
CSS, thanks for the honesty and glad you and the family made it ok!

On the subject of Continental cylinders, way back when we quit using overhauled cylinders, and the vast majority of our cylinder problems went away. There are so many REALLY old cylinders out there, with work hardened metals......

And that junk just keeps getting "overhauled" and put bsck in service.....including by Continental.

I went to Lycoming's Piston Engine Service School, and one of the first things they tell you is that Lycoming does NOT reuse cylinders on ANY of its engine rebuilds. A first run engine comes in for overhaul (not reman, mind you) and those cylinders come off at the loading dock, where they go into a giant press, which squashes them flat. Then they're recycled. Even first run cylinders.

They told us in the school that they believe that many cylinder failures are due to old cylinders being reused till something fails.

And Lyc cylinders are built stronger than Continentals as well.

MTV

Mtv if that is the case I will start making bubble check on my cylinders every time I have a compression test, which in Costa Rica has to be done every 100 hrs.
Im glad I know this now
Most of the time I fly over unforgiving terrain, spectacular , fun , but no options for emergency landings.

Differential compression checks are pretty much a waste of time, and not required by the FAA. A better test of a cylinder's health is to use an automotive type compression tester. You connect it to a cylinder, then motor the engine through with the starter. You're verifying that the cylinder actually MAKES compression, as opposed to fiddling with a cylinder to see if you can get it to HOLD compression at one particular point in its cycle. A pretty useless test.

MTV

mtv wrote:On the subject of Continental cylinders, way back when we quit using overhauled cylinders, and the vast majority of our cylinder problems went away. There are so many REALLY old cylinders out there, with work hardened metals......

And that junk just keeps getting "overhauled" and put bsck in service.....including by Continental.

I went to Lycoming's Piston Engine Service School, and one of the first things they tell you is that Lycoming does NOT reuse cylinders on ANY of its engine rebuilds. A first run engine comes in for overhaul (not reman, mind you) and those cylinders come off at the loading dock, where they go into a giant press, which squashes them flat. Then they're recycled. Even first run cylinders.

They told us in the school that they believe that many cylinder failures are due to old cylinders being reused till something fails.

And Lyc cylinders are built stronger than Continentals as well.

MTV

MTV, I've never heard this about Lycoming cylinders!

I can certainly appreciate their approach, however. One of the things I've had to adjust to this last year since we added the 185 to the hangar is the relative roughness of the Continental IO520 in the 185 compared to the silky, turbine-smooth operation of the Lycoming IO540 in the Bush Hawk. There is just NO vibration on that engine/airframe combination!

Interesting stuff here...

There's a reason Lycoming engines of a certain hp are heavier than Continentals of similar hp.....not necessarily bad, mind you, but.....

Understand that my comment on Lyc cylinders only applies to Lycoming overhauls. A shop can reuse cylinders on a field overhaul if they want. Lycoming does not, however, even on a factory overhaul (as opposed to a factory reman).

MTV