No going back now! Once you have flown it, you'd never be satisfied with a "Plain Jane" O470 again. It just makes a great airplane all that much greater. Steve's engines run turbine smoooooth. Good luck and break her in hard to set the rings.

Well?!


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Well, Wow
Its been a long weekend and frickin hot too. The engine is great. There was only one item that we debated sending in for overhaul but decided against, and now we are regretting it big time. The Alternator took a shit on the 3rd 1 hr flight. Lost all electrical power by the time we landed. Did some trouble shooting and the Alternator is tits up. So I now we all get stuff from Aircraft Spruce, well they were the only ones with one in stock so we bought it and paid extra for overnight guaranteed delivery next day by noon. Guess what? Noon rolled around then 2pm then 5pm. They claim UPS picked it up, UPS claims they never picked it up, nobody nows where it is and the airplane needs to go South Sunday morning for the season. Spruce was a royal pain in the ass to deal with, and so was UPS, neither would make it right and we were not getting the part in time period. Spruce finally confessed that 3 orders that day were missing and they were knee deep in trying to figure out what happened. They guaranteed again we would get another alternator by Tuesday at noon. Not sure what the guarantee is good for. Well, its Monday and I get a visit from UPS with the first shipped Alternator. It was shipped from California to Kentucky to get to Oregon. Figure that one out. So my mechanic is gone, my Dad left with out the airplane and I'm stuck with a disabled, but beautiful 180 blocking my Kitfox in the hanger. Man what problems to have.
Good news is we should have it back together in time to go to Idaho in 10 days. We got the initial 3 hr brake in done and the first oil change. We saw the oil consumption stop and CHT's drop. The oil looked super clean coming out and the filter looked good. Hard to give a real impression of the engine and prop combo because we were running 24 squared most of the time. It is much faster, cruising at yellow line, smooth, and really pulls on take off. It is weird going from the 2400RPM limited O470U to running 2700RPM on take off. My buddy on the ground says it is really loud on take off.
When we get it back in the air I'll give a better report on performance and compare it to the O470U a bit more.