What did you do today?

Gary Ward said:
Discovered at the last minute that the rear springs I was ready to install were for a coupe and not sprung for a convertible.
duh….Now I can’t get the correct ones till Thursday.
Luckily it can sit there until next week.
Being it is a convertible means it has additional bracing bolted to the chassis that has to be removed to lower the rear axle to get the springs out. PIA I don't want to do it twice.

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This is how the car sit's. It handles very nicely, big difference than when it was sprung higher. I have drove it over 20 miles now. Wonder if I need a 4 wheel alinement since it handles so precisely?
 
Rolled back the clock 30 years and held the flashlight for dad while he changed the oil on the ranger utv. Still got yelled at.

Well attempted to change the oil. He accidentally drained the transmission gearcase. Only caught when I crawled under to drain the transmission. Whys the drain plug wet?

D'oh!
 
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Racerx said:
Rolled back the clock 30 years and held the flashlight for dad while he changed the oil on the ranger. Still got yelled at.

Well attempted to change the oil. He accidentally drained the transmission gearcase. Only caught when I crawled under to drain the transmission. Whys the drain plug wet?

D'oh!
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Me in the early 70s, changing oil in a ‘71 Ventura for that first time: “Hey, Dad, is the oil supposed to be red like this?” Hey, I was like 12. Dad took it well.
 
DaleB said:
Me in the early 70s, changing oil in a ‘71 Ventura for that first time: “Hey, Dad, is the oil supposed to be red like this?” Hey, I was like 12. Dad took it well.
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In his defence, the new fluid is a dark blue and he's color blind.
 
HPSL said:
The sky and the RASP this morning did not offer much promise. It was lovely on the eastern slopes of the Front Range but rainy with isolated T-storms to the west. But then, after lunch the front made it's way east.

This afternoon and early evening there was a lot of 3 to 3.5 m/s lift in the bowls. Enough for 1.33 hours of soaring after a 0.15 climb.

It's not a Discus or Ventus, but with it's little engine a towplane or winch operator is not needed. And it is light enough that a good time can be had with moderate lift.

The forecast is for more rain tonight. But those gaps make all of the difference.
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RASP ??
 
Regional Atmospheric Soaring Prediction, developed by Dr. Jack (Dr. John Glendering), it is a model of multiple weather parameters such as thermal updraft velocity, winds, and the bottoms.

This data is often expressed in BLIPMAPS. Boundary Layer Information Predicton MAPs.

Having a minimum sink of 0.63 m/s (one meter per second is basically 200 ft per minute) my featherweight HPSL can give me a nice day of soaring with 3.0 or more m/s of lift.

The altitude of the bottoms tells me how much time I will be making circles.
 
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Flew formation (biplane/Champ) all around southern Minnesota gathering another dozen-ish FlyMN passport stamps. Whole southern half of the state is done now. Filed an ASRS report spurred by a close call with a damn-near-NORDO guy in a Skylane exercising an unconventional pattern entry to a runway with a tailwind. Stay frosty!
 
Watched a fox go behind the house looking for chipmunks. IMG_2046.jpeg

He lost focus and was unsuccessful. I sent the dog out a few minutes later with more patience. After 15 minutes on point I gave her a hand flushing it out. The fox will get to eat after all.

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Showed up at the Tag Office to get in line for title work at 0830. Came back at 1130…only half an hour to go, according to the board.
 
10:50am. Ambulance has departed, no sirens so presumably not a life or death situation.

Still no electricity. Which means no running water for now.
 
Sorry to hear. One of my four is inching closer to that point. Got him 16 years ago and he wasn't a kitten then.
 
Got our newly welded (not as pretty as @ColinD ’s welds), freshly powder coated rosemary no mount back on the engine and have the engine nearly ready to hang. Got a bunch of wiring cleaned up to eliminate the rat’s nest the builder left - and I made a little worse, to be fair. Got a new canopy assembly a day closer to being ready to install.
 
Trying to figure out why my engine (O-235-L2C) is blowing a bunch of oil out the crankcase breather. Fresh rings (~50-150 hours) and 75/80 or better compression on all cylinders, oil stays light amber and doesn't smell like combustion, so it doesn't seem like an obvious blowby issue. I've tried all kinds of elbow orientations and hose routings, added a baffled oil separator to promote coalescing.

Got on the lathe this morning and made this dipstick tube adapter out of some scrap, going to tap it for 1/8 NPT and run a hose to a manometer and see what my case pressure is during a high-power ground run and in flight. Maybe a leaky front crank seal pressurizing the case?
 

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ColinD said:
Trying to figure out why my engine (O-235-L2C) is blowing a bunch of oil out the crankcase breather. Fresh rings (~50-150 hours) and 75/80 or better compression on all cylinders, oil stays light amber and doesn't smell like combustion, so it doesn't seem like an obvious blowby issue. I've tried all kinds of elbow orientations and hose routings, added a baffled oil separator to promote coalescing.

Got on the lathe this morning and made this dipstick tube adapter out of some scrap, going to tap it for 1/8 NPT and run a hose to a manometer and see what my case pressure is during a high-power ground run and in flight. Maybe a leaky front crank seal pressurizing the case?
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Not sure on the lycoming. But if you have the wrong fitting on an O200, the oil splashes off the crank shaft right at that fitting. And just a little crankcase pressure will send it on down the line to lube up the belly.
 
Yeah, I saw the way they modify the nipple on the O-200 by brazing a tube into it. Due to its location in the casting, the Lycoming port should be pretty well shrouded from crankshaft windage. There isn't really enough depth in the O-235 case for me to perform a similar modification.

I did experiment with relocating the breather to the vacuum pump blockoff plate on the accessory case, like they do with the Christen 801 inverted oil kit (see the '809' breather adapter pictured on the bottom right corner of page 2-4.) I screwed up somehow and ended up pumping 2 qts of oil overboard in .7 hours, so that was an abject failure. There's a pressurized oil supply port for the vac pump on that mounting pad. It should have been blocked off, and I didn't see any telltale signs that oil had compromised the seal and entered my baffled housing when I tore it apart, but I don't see any other way it could have lost that much oil so quickly. Kind of disappointing to spend that much time machining parts and fail that badly, but at least I left some cool looking aluminum scrap in my wake. :lol:
 

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I governed the maximum speed on my entire fleet of school buses to match the state's maximum allowable speed for a school bus, because Texas has had difficulty keeping its buses upright.
 
1) Started moving things from one storage locker to another that's twice as big at half the price at a different company.

2) Talked to a guy about buying his plane to replace my Ercoupe.
 
Rich Holt said:
I governed the maximum speed on my entire fleet of school buses to match the state's maximum allowable speed for a school bus, because Texas has had difficulty keeping its buses upright.
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Let me recommend:

Bithlo, FL - School Bus Figure 8 Races

Visit reports, news, maps, directions and info on School Bus Figure 8 Races in Bithlo, Florida.
www.roadsideamerica.com
 
Jim K said:
If you ever get tired of airplanes breaking, buy a semi.

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This kind of work is right up my alley. Been maintaining a small fleet of class 7 trucks since 1983. I did a brake job about 3 weeks ago on one of them. Another brake job earlier this year.
I don't have many pictures of my work trucks, was not that excited to take pictures of my work.
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I do polish them with a buffer. Not much fun but rewarding in the end.IMG_5050.jpegIMG_5049.jpeg
 
Gary Ward said:
This kind of work is right up my alley. Been maintaining a small fleet of class 7 trucks since 1983. I did a brake job about 3 weeks ago on one of them. Another brake job earlier this year.
I don't have many pictures of my work trucks, was not that excited to take pictures of my work.
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I do polish them with a buffer. Not much fun but rewarding in the end.View attachment 144975View attachment 144976
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What are you doing this afternoon? :biggrin:
 
Jim K said:
If you ever get tired of airplanes breaking, buy a semi.

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I bet you have that wheel off because of the leaking oil seal. Break out the steam cleaner to clean those brake shoes up and use Guardian seals that mount on the spindle. You need a "coffee cup" tool to install them but they hold up well in severe service and are easy to install.
 
Jim K said:
If you ever get tired of airplanes breaking, buy a semi.
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Aww yeah, I've got one of those IronPlanet trucks, too. M1088A1. It comes in really handy around the farm when some eastern bloc trucker slides a Volvo VNL off the edge of the driveway (couple times every winter like clockwork.) :biggrin:
 
Gary Ward said:
This kind of work is right up my alley. Been maintaining a small fleet of class 7 trucks since 1983. I did a brake job about 3 weeks ago on one of them. Another brake job earlier this year.
I don't have many pictures of my work trucks, was not that excited to take pictures of my work.
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I do polish them with a buffer. Not much fun but rewarding in the end.View attachment 144975View attachment 144976
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I don't see a single beer anywhere!
 
Huh, case pressure never exceeded 3 in.H2O on the manometer at wide open throttle (flight and ground.) I guess that's great news but I'm even more stumped by my breather spray.

At any rate, it was a nice evening to take a sunset biplane ride.
 

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MauleSkinner said:
I dunno…I used to work with a guy who successfully fixed his airplane with a pipe wrench and a sledge hammer, so at least one of the tools is the same. ;)
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It's funny...After a lifetime of working on trucks and tractors, the tiny tools and delicate touch required by airplanes has been quite an adjustment. I could count the number of times I used a 1/4" drive socket on one hand before airplanes. Not having to beat on things with a 10lb. hammer? Weird. Not having to remove 25lbs of dirt before starting a job? Really weird.
 
Jim K said:
It's funny...After a lifetime of working on trucks and tractors, the tiny tools and delicate touch required by airplanes has been quite an adjustment. I could count the number of times I used a 1/4" drive socket on one hand before airplanes. Not having to beat on things with a 10lb. hammer? Weird. Not having to remove 25lbs of dirt before starting a job? Really weird.
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My mechanic did have to clean the oats out of the root fairings prior to doing the condition inspection once. :rofl:
 
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