I just about joined the dead-stick club today, opted for the sputter-club instead. Flying at about 900' altitude, the engine started running rough, carb heat seemed to clear it. Then it started to die, then came back to life, then died,then back to life, etc etc.-- seemed like probably intermitant fuel starvation. Turned toward home and monkeyed with the mag switches,fuel selector, mixture, etc all to no avail. I was over semi-hospitable terrain (small fields and questionable beaches at not-low tide) about 25 miles south of my airport, which was the nearest airport anyway. Right at the south end of the Coyle Peninsula for those that know the north Puget Sound area. Had to pass over a couple miles of even less hospitable terrain (timber and clearcuts) about halfway home, before getting back over some small farm fields. Engine cutting in and out the whole dirty way, altitude slowly slipping away too. I really considered landing, as opposed to getting over the timber etc and then being forced down. But the outcome of landing where I was seemed uncertain-- boggy ground, powerlines,ditches, etc-- so I pressed on. I was down to 600' by the time I got home, landed, and wouldn't you know-- the engine ran just fine taxiing.
Tore into it, gascolator and fuel pump screens were clean but the finger-screen at the carb fuel inlet was full of something fiberous. No idea what. A buddy said it looked to him like paper gasket material, no idea where that might have come from.
I've never checked this screen in the 900-some hours since OH. The way the ragwing 170 fuel system is plumbed, it's kind of a pain in the ass to pull since there are several hard (pipe thread) connections to take loose, not just a hose and an elbow. I feel pretty stupid, it's my own damn fault for not checking this screen, esp cuz I've cleaned out some similar fiberous debris from both the gascolator and fuel pump screens in the past. I'm just glad that I was lucky enough to not have the thing just flat quit on me. God looks after fools, I guess.

Eric

Have you been useing a chamois leather for water filtration. This was the "tried and true" method for many years but fibres would come off the backside of the chamois if used inside out.
Jeremy

I'm glad your ok Eric! Thankfully you were not in a Maule. The insurance company's probably would raise my rates just hearing that story. Just kidding. Regards...Rob

Way to hang in there Eric. I know that area pretty good, when I go north to Port Townsend, the San Juans, Vancouver Is., it is the preferred route. With low cielings you have ugly mountainous terrain to the west, Hood Canal below with muddy beaches better suited for shelfish than airplanes and flatter terrain of timber and some fields. I was heading up that way last summer and the same sort of thing happenned. I limped back to OLM and I too drained all the sumps and gascolator, pulling out the screen in the carbeurator and draining the bowl. I found some debris which must have been the culprit since that cleared up the problem. It sounds like my problem was not as severe of a power loss...I know what you had going through your mind in looking for a place to land (...some of those other things you think about, I don't go there).

I think that should be an annual procedure of draining, cleaning and inspection.

I too am a member of the Sputter Club. I have had two major incidents of sputter, one similar to Zero.One.Victor's but more subtle, and one I doubt anyone has ever heard of! I'll tell that one first.

My 180 had had a bad ground loop before I bought it, and the cowl was repaired and painted. I had owned it for about two years when I went on a trip to Texas via Grand Junction. I dropped off my wife there so she could visit friends in Telluride (lucky her).

On departure from Walker Field's 10,000 foot (thank God) runway, the engine basically quit at 50 feet. It started running so rough and losing rpm so fast that I just aborted and landed halfway down the runway. I assumed carb ice, although it was 45 on a very dry winter morning. I went back to the runup pad and gave it a full minute of heat and tried again. Same thing, smooth power to 50 feet, then all hell breaks loose. I taxied back to the FBO and begged a wrench to pull the carb drain plug. (extensive fuel sampling first showed no visible contamination) Nothing came out of the carburetor either, so an hour later I tried again. Same damn thing, except this time I rode it out for a while and rammed both throttle and mixture control back and forth a couple of times. Suddenly the engine came back to life and continued climb out as if nothing had happened! Being younger and stupider, I figured something had obstructed fuel flow in the carb momentarily and was gone, so I continued on to Texas. I did at least have the part about the obstruction correct.

Life was good for another TWO YEARS when suddenly it happened again, not quite as bad (and much higher) this time, and manipulation of the mixture again fixed the problem, so I continued home. This time I was determined to figure out what the hell was going on. I removed the lower cowl and inspected it carefully, thinking perhaps the pleated silicone and fabric connection between the air box and the cowl induction tube was disintegrating. It was fine. I noticed, as I had several times before, that there was a slight amount of overspray in the throat of the induction tube behind the air filter......I just happened to scrape it with my fingernail and guess what. A piece the size of a quarter flaked off! There was the smoking gun. I took some ScotchBrite, lacquer thinner, and various shards of plexiglass and spent the next hour removing every last trace of paint from the induction tube. I surmised that a similar or smaller flake of paint had cause the problem and the violent changes in manifold pressure had broken it up and it went on through the venturi and the engine. Not a happy thought considering all the backcountry strips I had gone into in the intervening two years!

Folks, if you don't know by now, there is NO paint allowed in the induction tubing of any airplane that I know of!

More to follow,

Rocky

Also watch out for the sticky label on the housing of the square type air filter, time and solvents and gas can let it slide around until one day it can get into the venturi area and hang up across the venturi tubes. This happened in an M4 220 Franklin, a field was available for the pilot.
Jeremy

My entrance into the sputter club occurred on a flight from Long Beach, CA to Phoenix in my 140. About 45 minutes into the flight I started to notice a very slight, occasional knock in the left rudder pedal. I had just past Palm Springs and was approaching the rougher terrain to the east. Deciding that it was just "automatic rough" I pressed on. A few minutes later, the engine quit for about a second then began running normally again. My initial thought was that it had just swallowed a slug of water. It's happened before. So again, I pressed on but turned more to the south to follow a bit closer to I-10. Next thing I know it quits again, only when it starts back up this time I know something isn't right. I immediately turned toward PSP and began trying to diagnose the problem. The engine was running, but it was running rough. Change tanks, mixture rich, mags L vs. R, primer locked. No change there, but a study of the oil press/temp and CHT are good. I also tried pulling the power back a bit, but that made things significantly worse so back to full throttle it went. At this point there's no doubt in my mind that something in the engine has let go because I'm beginning to hear and feel metal to metal grinding away. I too had to make a choice between an off airport landing, or backtracking to Palm Springs. Since the engine was still producing power I decided to go to PSP. I easily made it to the airport and the landing was unremarkable except for the noises coming from under the cowl. I opened the cowl expecting to see carnage but only found that everything looked normal. Further inspection, however, revealed that a bearing in my newly overhauled alternator had seized. Luckily, the alternator drive gear shed its teeth and allowed the motor to keep running or I'd have ended up on the highway.

Moral of the story is...if it ain't broke, don't fix it. I'd just had the alternator overhauled hoping new diodes would eliminate an alternator whine I'd hear when transmitting on the radio. The overhaul didn't fix the problem and in the end created a much bigger one.

Glad you made it and that your fix didn't lighten you wallet any.

-Matt

OK I'll play too!

Sputter story 1. I had just tried to take my parents to Juneau, we watched some whales and some sealions then flew on down the channel. I came to some low cloud that topped out at about 1600 ft, after calling Juneau I decided it was OK to go over the top. I got just out over the clouds in clear air when the engine went pucketa-pucketa. I pulled carb heat and turned to a friendly beach strip I knew of. The engine cleared right up but I decided to go on home and eat lunch, get more gas and try again after the cloud burned off. Coming into downwind "Charlie goes puckety-puckety again, carb heat did not help this time, I shortened up the turn and landed to the sound of something inside the motor wanting to get out. The crankshaft had broken right in two between #4 and #5.

Sputter 2. After spending the winter gathering parts and building a new motor complete with new mags I was flying just accross the river looking at moose when I get a different sputter, I limped back to the airport and later found that the "new" mags had sat around so long the seals had dried up and oil was passing from the engine to the mags causing a breakdown in the electrical field.

Sputter 3 I was in moose camp when my buddy came back just an hour after he left. He said I had a plugged up sewer main and was needed in town. I jumped in his super cub and off we went. About half way to town here comes the dreaded sputter-put-putt! Can we make the strip at 25 mile? No way, how 'bout the river flat? Pretty soft right now, There's a strip at eighteen mile, OH SHIT it quit completely. Turn left, line up on the one straight part of the road, zig-zag to lose altitude and plop down pretty as you please. Pushed it off the road and found a broken fuel selector.

I sure hope I'm done with these.

Shane

I had a previous entry into the sputter club about 6 years ago, when #4 connecting rod decided to break and knock a hole in the crankcase while it was at it. Luckily, I had just passed an airport so I just limped back, no biggie. Of course, I was out over the salt water at 1600' when it let go, so it wasn't totally boring.
At least then there was no question: time to land, NOW. This time, I was having a hell of a time deciding whether to do a precautionary landing or wait and maybe be forced into one. Damned if you do, damned of you don't. Main reason I continued on was that the landing oportunities were about the same all along my route, with the exception of the couple miles of timber and clearcuts.

Eric

My other stutter incident, or rather series of incidents, first occurred about three years ago, when my engine just started running rough for no apparent reason in cruise. Naturally I pulled on carb heat and it smoothed right out. I ran heat for several minutes and continued the flight. It didn't seem particularly moist that day, but since carb heat took care of the problem, I just figured that's what it was.

It happened again several times intermitently, sometimes with 20 or 30 hours between incidents. Since some of the occurences coincided with a likely possibility of carb ice and the application of heat always fixed the problem, this went on for a year or so. Finally it started getting worse, and I had a frightening experience on a cold and wet day when I could barely keep the engine running.

I started investigating. I had never noticed much junk in my fuel system, and it had been completely drained and flushed in 1998 when I had to fix a leak in the integral tanks. The system ran very clean for several years after that, and I always used a 16 oz. GATS jar (check it out at Sporty's or Chief Aircraft) to sample all 8 (!) fuel sumps on my plane. Of course I poured the fuel back in each time, that's the whole point of the GATS jar and it has a filter fine enough to stop water, finer than the gascolator screen. I suspected some sort of fuel flow problem from the beginning, but a check of the gascolator showed only the most minute amount of some fibrous material, only noticeable if you rubbed your fingers across the mesh. The total amount was about the volume of a BB, and it was essentially INVISIBLE in a sample of gas!

I didn't think that was significant, so I started looking at the carb air box, which had been rebuilt and carefully sealed during the Oct. 2000 major overhaul (which also exchanged my old carb for an overhauled one....). Nothing out of the ordinary there, so I put everything back together and flew for several more weeks with no problem. Then it happened again, this time in mid-summer with a relative humidity of about 5%! I began to get really aggravated. I just KNEW this was not a carb ice problem, but every single time it ever occurred carb heat fixed it. I have a 6 probe EGT/CHT and a carb temp gauge and I spend a LOT of time looking at them so I consider it a very remote possibilty that carb ice could happen to me without some warning.


So I told my A&P that I was going to pull the carburetor and I wanted to go through it with a fine tooth comb....he thought that was probably a good idea, since I had been bugging him for a year as to any possible explanation for this weird phenomenon. Well, here is what we found. This recently overhauled exchange carburetor had a loose throttle butterfly, bad enough that he thought it would have come completely off or jammed in another hundred hours or so, it's float needle seat had deep grooves in it that looked like maybe 3000 hours worth, the needle had a groove worn at the seating area, also 3000 hours worth. In short, it looked like they just painted it and yellow tagged it. I was pissed! My previous carb had only 1800 hours on it and was perfectly fine. There was so much else going on at the overhaul that it just slipped though the cracks. Never Again!

However, there was no visible crud anywhere in the float bowl, and we ran several ounces of solvent through it and blew air through it every which way we could. When we pulled the finger screen, again a minute amount of fibrous material was visible, and of all things the decomposed remains of a FLY! Guess how long this carb sat on a shelf unprotected.

So we put new everything in the carb and it went back together and I flew for a year with no problems. This winter it happened AGAIN! Well maybe.... I don't know for sure because it could have been plain old carb ice that day. However, the sudden onset was suspicious, just the same way it had happened those other times. I talked with several other very experienced A & P's, who basically told me to do what we had already done. They did all agree on one thing, that given the extremely careful fuel sumping procedures that I have been using for years it was MOST unlikely that I had a fuel flow problem caused by filter impaction. I was not convinced.

Here is what I have started doing and what I have found so far: I got two large glass Mason jars and a couple of Planter's Peanuts jars (just because they are easy to hold). I went to the NAPA store and bought two regular inline fuel filters and joined them in line. I bought a small funnel with a built in screen. Now, every time I sump the aircraft before flight, I take a full GATS jar (16 oz.) sample out of each drain, pour it into one glass jar, take it out into the sunlight and swirl it around, then hold it up to something dark (my sleeve) and watch. If the light is just right, I can see some minute fibers 1mm or less and other motes even smaller glinting in the sunlight! There is also the usual small amount of fine dirt. I take that jar and pour it through the two fuel filters into another Mason jar, and take THAT out into the sunlight and check it. Sometimes I will repeat the procedure, if there is ANY stuff still visible. I did pull my finger screen this winter just after that one incident and it appeared perfectly clean, but I am continuing to find superfine transparent stuff after a couple of runs of this filtering procedure, which I only started last month. Now it's hard for me to believe that the amount of stuff I'm seeing would actually plug a fuel screen to the point of cutting off flow, but I think that fibrous material, even as miniscule as what I am seeing, has the insidious property of slowly building up across the mesh of a filter screen under constant flow pressure until it reaches a critical point where it has mostly obstructed the filter and any additional stuff will rapidly close off the flow. After all, this is the principal behind many automotive products that are supposed to stop leaks in radiators, etc.

Once the flow stops, any sloshing movement such as pushing the plane back into the hangar causes some of the particles to drop off the filter and settle to the bottom of the gascolator or finger screen housing, waiting to get swirled back up onto the filter after some minutes or hours of the next flight. I had a similar experience many years ago with bad gas in my Toyota 4WD. It ran long enough to get me well out into the desert, then quit after a mile of sputtering. I waited 40 minutes or so, and it would then run another 5 miles before quitting. Eventually, after about 5 iterations, I got back to town and replaced the filter.

Although I can't yet prove that my incidents were due to fibrous contamination, it is obvious that Zero One Victor's was. He found the smoking gun on the finger screen in the carburetor. He, like I, had not pulled and checked that screen at every annual because there was no reason to suspect that it was dirty. There had never been more than the usual slight amount of dirt in all the fuel samples he and I took over a period of years. In my case, the gascolator screen showed only the most sublte indication that there was any fiber in the fuel, an easily overlooked item....since it is INVISIBLE! (until it build up to a threatening amount, that is.)

There have also been recorded instances of bad contamination of fiberglass tanks because of poor resin technique and/or the use of chopped glass where there should have been only cloth. Homebuilders beware!



So here comes some more of the old pelican's pontificating:

1. Always inspect closely in BRIGHT light and clean ALL accessible fuel screens at every annual, even though the finger screen requires that star safety washer on Marvel carbs to be replaced each time. Go buy a half dozen of them.

2. Since fibrous contamination is so difficult to see, use a large clear glass jar once in a while to really check what's coming out of the gascolator. Hold it up to bright sunshine or shine a flashlight up through the bottom of the jar after swirling it. If you see little tiny things that glint in the light but are otherwise invisible (not bubbles), BE SUSPICIOUS! I have noticed that the samples out of the gascolator have at least twice the amount of this material as any other sump, so it's the place to start looking.

3. Always fuel your aircraft yourself and never let any type of rag or paper towel near the opening; put the cap on before wiping up.

4. If you are going to pour back your fuel samples I suggest you make a setup like mine; the GATS jar provides inadequate filtration in my opinion. (at least for fibers) I'm thinking of getting a dedicated two gallon metal can so I can filter several days worth of samples before pouring it all back in. Or just use it in your lawnmower!


Do you think I'm being a little anal here? Well, you are absolutely correct, but I will tell you one thing: by the time I am through with this filtering procedure, some 200 gallons later, I will have the cleanest fuel system in the world or I will have proved that there really is something disintegrating in my tanks. Naturally, I would have already opened up the tank access to look for whatever if I had not personally cleaned them 7 years ago during the resealing. I even VACUUMED them at that time, then inspected every inch of them with a light and inspection mirror. The only way anything could have gotten in these tanks is though a fuel pump. Also, I am the ONLY person that has ever fueled this aircraft in the 13 years I've owned it.

I suspect that the amount of fiber remaining in the tanks is minimal, and therefore I'm willing to try this procedure for a couple of months before going though the hassle of opening up the tanks and searching for the source of the contamination. I will inspect both the gascolator and the finger screen once more before summer, and if there is ANY further sign of fiber on those screens I will open up the tanks.

Be careful out there!

Rocky

I have had two sputter incidents, both very close to the airport, thank goodness.

The first was in my citabria, just flew over the numbers on departure, no strip left in front of me and about 100-150 agl. All of a sudden bang bang pop lose power what the heck! The engine back fires then does not then does, etc. The ground was getting closer as I start to play with the mag switches, first the right, no better, both no better, left, smooth engine! Went around and took the mag out. The gear makes the rotor had a few teeth stripped off, the mag would go out of time then catch the rotor and fire the cylinders at the wrong time, the stop turning and smooth out for a second until the rotor caught again.

The second was on downwind to land during a 15 g 20 70degree cross wind in my stinson. To go straight with the runway I had to xc the plane to the left, and I was on the left tank at the time, as it was the fullest, crossing the numbers on the approach end of the runway sputter sputter cough stop, switched tank to uphill and she started right up. Got to base final and switched back to the left tank as it was now the uphill tank. Lesson here, modify the fuel management on hard approach to have uphill tank with fuel selected. If that tank was empty, I guess that I would have to fly a funny approach in order to keep the fuel going. Now that I have that in my little dense brain, I should be ok.

Always learning.

Dane

So far to date, my only sputter incident was due to my lack of fuel management.
I was coming back from the Washington coast, departing at dusk early summer for a 45-minute flight home. This area is known for haze and scud coming in pretty quick. It was also the first night landing in this plane. The field I was based at was lit but with the equivilant of 10 watt light bulbs and some very large Fir trees.
Anyone ever listen to the Night Gremlins?
You know the ones that make very subtle intermittant noises in your engine when the radio is quite and there's no one with you to talk to? I was very focused on the weather (8-10 mi vis, VFR but with a slight haze) It was a moonless night and I was now over the Hood Canal @ 4000' with only black water and black timber under me. I was also very focused on what the landing would be like not having the outside refference for landing my new taildragger (I think I had 30 hours in it by this time).
The engine hitched and died. Just that fast..... This is an injected engine and there is the little Dukes fuel booster pump used for priming.
Training and practice stepped in (Where did that come from!) and while trimming for best glide, looking for a suitable place to put down (no options there!) switching tanks and hitting the boost pump. At that time I still only had the Left & Right selector. The boost pump sounded really loud considering there was no more engine noise. It may have only taken and hour or two, OK, 15-20 seconds, it caught immediately and settled back into it's groove. I was about 20-minutes from the field and landing that thing with a cross wind, at night & with the wobbly knees from the adreline was entertaining. I cleared the field and put it away, called my wife who was still out at the ocean "I'm home, no problems". Little did she realize I was stuck in the plane 'till I found volunteers to pull the seat out of my ass. It was over a year later that I let on what I did.

Well was a few years back. Had taken a trip up to Bellingham area in a 205.

Went to leave around 7:30 am and had fueled from the fuel trucks
It was kind of misty and had sprinkled the night before. Did the preflight on the 205 and everything looked good. Hopped in, cranked her up to let her warm up a bit. The two other guys with me are pilots, so the guy riding shotgun was going to do the radio work while I had the flying duty. I'll use initials to protect the innocent.

Now me I go about 240 or so, D riding in the right seat about 280, so even with the 205 it was a bit snug. Anyway we listen to the ATIS and get ready to call for clearance. D keys the mic and all hell breaks loose. Sounds like the old CB band in the 70s, feedback, squealing, about blew my David Clarks out the window. So shut down and analyze the situation. Now S, sitting in the back seat is a WWII vet pilot, so he's been around to say the least. Anyway 10 minutes of trouble shooting found us with a faulty audio panel.

No problem, S pulls out a handheld com, we get clearance and depart the area. We climb out and stay clear of the Seattle TCA and proceed to cross the Cascades in CAVU conditions. Beautiful day, great scenery. Since the 205 has right and left positions on the fuel selector I waited to change tanks after we've crossed the Cascades. More hospitable terrain on the East side. I have always been taught if your doing a tank switch, switch in a good area just incase.

We had just crossed the Dalles VOR South bound to Redmond (RDM). We are at 10.5 or so, sun shining, not a cloud anywhere. D is catching some Zs, S is reading the paper, me I'm fat, dumb and happy. Then it gets real quite . I drop the F-bomb, S tries to climb in the front with a "What the H-E double L was that?" D 280, me 240, S ain't gunna fit . Then sound again. Lasts maybe 2 seconds, seemed 10 minutes. I do a check, master, mags, mixture, fuel boost pump, fuel selector. All is well, S and I are alert and paying close attention. I hit the handheld GPS for the nearest field. D is still sawing logs. I fly from airport to airport all the way to Redmond, still no problems, but I'm sweating like a AA member at an open bar. ( no offense attended). We get close to Redmond I wake D up to do the radio work, ( no headset jacks for the handled). Check ATIS, wind 200 at 18 gusting to 25, no big deal, we'll land on 22. Not a chance . A heavy on 22 blew some tires on landing and was stuck on the runway. So the tower gives us 28, hey cross wind time, more sweat. I get the bird on the ground and wished I could get a shot and beer .

By this time I have an headache that won't quit, plus my shirt is soaked. I ask D if he would fly the final leg to BNO. No problem, by that time the heavy is off the runway. We depart (me on the handheld) D at the helm. Things are looking good, we're about Snow Mountain, (between RDM/BNO) when things go quite again . D says what's that? I says lets get over by the highway incase we need help. Forgot to mention to him that while he was asleep it happened earlier. We make it back to BNO in one piece. Eagle Wings checks the 205 the next day and doesn't find a thing, plane never did it again either. I flew her about 50 hours after that with no problems.

We figure we may have gotten a little water out of the fuel truck that didn't show up when I sumped the tanks, and that had cause problems with the fuel injection. Anyway a stuck button on the audio panel caused the radio issue. Fixed that with some contact cleaner. That gives some credo to the saying

Q: "You know why there is a prop on a plane?"
A: "To keep the pilot cool, because if the prop stops, watch him sweat. "

Same goes for when the thing quits making engine noise.

I liked your saying:

Skylane wrote:That gives some credo to the saying

Q: "You know why there is a prop on a plane?"
A: "To keep the pilot cool, because if the prop stops, watch him sweat. "

Reminds me of the one for electronics:

All electronics run on smoke. No why? Because when you let the smoke out they don't work any more.

tom

On long final to an airport in Canada.

rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr----------rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr-----------rrrrr hiccup hiccup

*



Sputter one: "rut ro!" Second sputter: "/edited for content/!" Last gasp: I didn't have time to say anything except call out a quick mayday on CTAF (or rather, ATF in Canada ). Best glide is great but it ain't gonna make the final approach glideslope without a spinning propeller, as I found out. Fortunately for me those accommodating Canadians had mowed a hayfield short of the runway, I only had to worry about the haystacks.

Turned out a cracked cylinder decided to give way when I changed power settings on final. The intake manifold cracked with the movement and all my fuel-air mixture to all cylinders went elsewhere in the cowl.

This is a great thread.

I've had my share too, said the F word, and the S word, sat on the ground shakin a little, thinkin how I lucked out one more time, etc., but, this one's a little different.

joecub needed a Agcat delivered to Dallas, Texas from Winnemucca, NV, and I was elected. The Agcat was really tired, looked awful and leaked oil terribly, but I was in for the adventure.

When I got about 2 - 3 hours out on the first day, the Pratt 450 started sputtering really bad, and I could see the cylinders really shaking up front. I sat up quickly, looking for a good place to set er down, saw absolutely nothing, so, I messed with mags, mixture and carb heat all to no avail, then just as quickly as it started, it just started running great again. About 20 minutes later, exactly the same thing happened, really running crappy, 20 - 30 seconds more of shakin like heck, mags, mixture or carb heat doing nothing to help, then presto running great again.

At the first few gas stop, and there were lots, with about a 120 mile range until dry, I couldn't find anything wrong, but it was just too oily to really check into it too much.

Finally, I just decided that that's the way she runs, 20 minutes of running great, then 20- 30 seconds of shaking and missing, then good for another 20 minutes of bliss.

Funny thing was, at first, each and every time, I'd be looking very seriously for a landing spot, fiddling with mags, mixture, throttle, fish tailing, rocking the wings and playing with carb heat etc., but after a day of this and for the next day and a half, I would be reading a book or playin with the cell phone or sitting there half asleep, and it would start crappin out again, and I absolutely wouldn't even notice. I'd just keep on doing whatever I was doing, completley oblivious to the fact that it was running like crap, and just became completely desensitized to the whole process.

It did it for the remainder of the trip, 2 1/2 more days. When I got there, no one was there at this little airport by Dallas where I delivered it, so I just left it, and figured that the next guy, who was supposed to deliver it on to Florida, would figure out for himself how she runs. No big deal.

Nowdays, I'm nicer, and would probably leave a note.. "Uses a LOT of oil"

1288 members on this site, 17 or so accounts on this thread = 1.3% odds. Probably not as accurate a figure as possible, but interesting to consider.

-DP

denalipilot wrote:1288 members on this site, 17 or so accounts on this thread = 1.3% odds. Probably not as accurate a figure as possible, but interesting to consider.

-DP

Oh, I know for a fact there's some good sputter stories with the 1288 that are not written yet, or, for many reasons, never will be.

Of course what I may have thought was a near death experience the first 1,000 hours I flew, wouldn't even be noticed by the time I put away the big log book at the end of the career.

Gump

no sputter...but....

fnew motor in old 182 p, took off to get time on fnew motor, night of course, climbed straight out at 800 fpm thank gawd...
at 5 out at 7500', over the really cool and black lava beds, oil pressure
drops to slightly above zero..no tapping on the gauge helped...
pulled the power back to idle while telling tower about my dilema,
and stood on the right rudder, did a really cute 60 deg. bank modified
canyon turn, (holbrook would have been proud) and proceeded to float
back to home, watching heat build and start smelling way HOT!
told tower that elect. was not smelling healthy either, so off went
the master and etc...tower did put the lights on full to make sure i could
not see, and dead-sticked it in. kept idling o.k., but shut her off once on
the ground to save motor...continental said a pile of metal shavings plugged up a few tight spots...maybe this is why my dad always flew
so high on the way to falconberry on loon creek...! jomac