Good On Ya Rotax

[Admin]

My CT has been grounded for the last couple of weeks because we started

 

to get erratic high oil pressure, yes with a brand new aircraft, once

 

the oil temp got up past 60deg the oil pressure, whilst it should stay

 

around 3.2, was jumping up to 6.2 and moving anywhere inbetween the two

 

about 3 times a second.

 

Rotax replaced the oil, oil filter,

 

oil pressure release valve, oil pump and oil pressure sender switch all

 

to no avail. Today they rang me and said that they will do one more

 

test but they already know what that will say so a complete brand new

 

engine will be dropped into her tomorrow.

 

It is comforting to know that they will look after you - well at least me in this instance

 

 

[Student Pilot]

Tried a direct reading pressure gauge? Good to see Rotax backing up their product.

 

 

[Admin]

Yep, they tried a "normal" gauge as well - twice, just to rule out the electronics

 

 

[greggf]

Good to hear positive feedback on Rotax support.

 

I have a 912UL and am about to do a 100 hourly, to establish a baseline as I recently bought the aircraft/engine (previous owner wasn't good at record keeping)

 

I

 

found the guys at Bert Flood's very helpful and supportive when I

 

phoned for parts and advice. Service was fast, and price reasonable. So

 

far, so good!

 

 

[Guest Guest]

Hi Ian,

 

what was the problem in the end?

 

regards

 

gtblu

 

 

[Admin]

It turned out to be the Flydat system but I have my reservations - will say more later when I return from holidays - it has cost me $10 already for internet access $2 per 10mins

 

 

[PaulN]

That's crazy ... you'd have about 25 mins cruising in your old CT for that .

 

Hi Ian, can't keep away can you? Enjoying the warmth and smilesin Qld? Hurry home, my brain's going fuzzy (oh alright, more fuzzy) with all this news reading stuff .

 

Paul

 

PS I can tell you some stuff about Flydat too . PaulN

 

 

[Admin]

Ok, now that I am back from holidays and on Unlimited Optus Cable Internet I can say what happened.

 

I picked up the CT from where it had its final assembly and after I had personally arranged for an avionics tech to install all the extra gauges, radio, transponder, GPS etc and move some of the panel items around to better suit my needs I flew her up to Shepp. On the way I noticed the warning light flashing and the oil pressure started bouncing around from min to max a couple of times a second. This was just before reaching Shepp and whilst I tried a few things I found that by throttling back the pressure although still bouncing around it stayed within the limits. I carefully landed at Shepp, checked the oil and all was ok.

 

I contacted Sports Aircraft Australia, the agents, and they organised Wally from Bert Floods to help me out.

 

The first thing we did was check the pressure with a standard gauge but still the same. We changed the oil and filter to Aust standards (Castrol ?) as it may have had the German oil or running in oil or whatever in it but still the same.

 

Wally came all the way to Shepp and replaced the oil pressure valve - still the same. he replaced the sender switch - still the same. He put our manual gauge on her and still the same.

 

Wally left and said he would come back after he spoke to Rotax Techs at the factory. A week later he came back and replaced everything on the engine except for the oil tank - I mean everything but still the same. Wally left and said he needed to speak to the techs again.

 

Another week later he returned with a brand new engine. Rotax wanted him to remove the engine, strip it down and find out what was wrong, fix it and replace it but he was able to convince them to just stick a brand new engine in her.

 

You guessed it, the new engine was STILL DOING IT Wally went away dumb founded and came back a couple of days later (by now he knew every white line on the 200k road from Lilydale to Shepp) with a new manual gauge. Low and behold the new gauge showed there wasn't a problem with the engine at all - at this stage I have had a brand new aircraft that I had only flown for about 30 minutes, the aircraft now had 27 hours on her and it was a month later.

 

The end result was the Rotax Flydat was showing an inaccurate reading. When I sold her she still had the manual gauge in her working properly and I hadn't had the time to get her to Lilydale to let Wally put a new Flydat installed.

 

Now the twist...

 

At Narromine I was talking to another guy who suddenly on his way to Narromine started getting the same problem but he had only manual gauges in his panel. I told him to speak to Wally