bnt83
Final Approach
Often the o'l cardinal sits in the hangar for a week then flys 2 or even 8 hours over the weekend, so I usually come out the night before the big day and make sure its ready to go. I've never really found anything that required further investigation until... I hit the right wing sump and cannot get any gas out of it. Shoot! The tank is about half full
Pop the tank filler cap and look in the tank and find nothing unusual, hit the sump again and eureka! Now I'm thinking there was a vacuum in the tank and I didn't hear the "whoosh" sound when removing the cap.
C177's have two fuel tank vents, one in each wingtip that exit just outboard the aileron straight aft. I grab an 18 inch San Antonio handcuff (plastic zip tie) and find resistance when pushing it into the vent line about 6 inches in.
I seems pretty obvious at this point and I take off the wingtip which hides a union that connects the last 16 inches of vent line that runs through the tip fairing to the rest of the system and blow out the offending blockage. Then I checked to see if the rest of the vent line is open.
Sure feeds more even now with the selector on "BOTH"
Pop the tank filler cap and look in the tank and find nothing unusual, hit the sump again and eureka! Now I'm thinking there was a vacuum in the tank and I didn't hear the "whoosh" sound when removing the cap.
C177's have two fuel tank vents, one in each wingtip that exit just outboard the aileron straight aft. I grab an 18 inch San Antonio handcuff (plastic zip tie) and find resistance when pushing it into the vent line about 6 inches in.
I seems pretty obvious at this point and I take off the wingtip which hides a union that connects the last 16 inches of vent line that runs through the tip fairing to the rest of the system and blow out the offending blockage. Then I checked to see if the rest of the vent line is open.
Sure feeds more even now with the selector on "BOTH"
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