Rotax Service Centre

Drained the Evans coolant and replaced it with Nulon llr, with the air temperature about 32 the cylinder head temp was 110 at cruise but got to 125 on climb outand spat a lot out of the plastic bottle, oil temp was 100, think I will have to run the evans, has any one made any baffles for a gazelle to try and force more air through the radiator, or fitted another radiator or moved it to a position where it can get more air flow rather than at the back of the motor where it hardly gets any air, I don't know what skyfox was thinking mounting where they did, open to suggestions cheers Keith.

Hi Keith..I believe the 80 hp gazelle if fitted with the radiator cooling kit(shroud on sides of radiator and oil cooler) requires coolant at 80/20 Glycol/water..

Most installations require around 2 ltrs..Oil temp should operate between 90/110 c and CHT temp the same with max to 140c..

Unmodified cooling system requires 100% Glycol or it will spit the coolant out.. Not sure about Evans as i have not come across anybody using it in a gazelle or Skyfox. With regards air entrainment i think its recomended to lower the tail and bleed the system.

Regards Richard..

If I can be of any assistance to anyone with respect to skyfox wings, repairs, rebuilding etc. feel free to ask me any questions. I built pretty much all of the Gazelle wings, updated and re-wrote the specs. for them, and know them inside out. Also have access to the covering process and the fellow who did the covering in the factory. Repairing 'fox wings including hangar brackets, trailing edge sections, epoxy joints, drag braces etc. isn't rocket science however if you're going to do it yourself and you're not an L2, you need the correct info. and the correct proceedures on how to go about it. I've read some pretty disturbing comments written by people fixing their wings obviously not really knowing what they're doing. I am happy to help anyone who is prepared to listen and do it properly. cheers.

saw this placard on a 503 drifter on the bay.does anyone know what its about ive never seen a warning like that befor does it apply to all 503s?

AUSTFLIGHT AVIATION

 

Avoid continouos operation between

 

5800rpm and 6400rpm.

As usual these are my opinions based on my experiances and not necessarily those of the Factory..Regards Richard..

There is a lot of threads on topic of what the maximum rpm should be on a Rotax 2 stroke so I decided to find out the truth behind all the beliefs.I first checked the rotax manual,then rang Wal at bert flood ,then a few other dealers (qld and uk)eventually I was able to email bombardier Rotax HQ Austria. was interesting on what they specified.

All Rotax 2 strokes share the same RPM

 

.MAX 6800 rpm REDLINE REDLINE REDLINE BEFORE ENGINE DESINTIGRATION.

 

Max Rpm should NOT exceed 6500 rpm. running no more than 5 mins max(IN STREIGHT AND LEVEL FLIGHT ONLY)

 

static full power should be around 6000 -6200 rpm max

 

take off climb should be 6200-6400 rpm max

 

and streight and level flight at full power should be 6500 Rpm 5 mins MAX

 

maximum rpm refers to full power in streight and level flight NOT TAKE OFF CLIMB!!

 

I however climb out at 6500 rpm but I may be rethinking this now.

Whilst Rotax manufacture the engine the ultimate responcibility of performance etc is the aircraft manufacturer.Whilst the max limit is 6800 RPM for 5 min the 582 is robust enough to over prop and under prop and still do the job,depending on the propeller you have fitted..

We set the Austflight drifter 582 strut brace with 4 blade Brolga prop with 17degree pitch blocks to obtain 6420RPM static which related to about 6550 climb out and 6800/6900 full throttle straight and level and advised owners after reaching a safe height on take off to then reduce Rpm back to around 6200..

Rotax fuel the engine to assist cooling of the combustion chamber during full power and yes it uses a lot of fuel,but it is the safety valve,if you dont use full power on take off and resist pulling back on the throttle to early,this is when the dredded piston siezure occurs.Your life is worth more than a little less of fuel.. I have seen a lot of engine prop combinations over the years and this 582 engine can handle a lot of punishment but it is still a 2 stroke engine and as such is subject to design/operator limitations.Since unleaded fuel and better oils come on the market we have very little problems with the 582 and my customers regulary obtain 600 hrs between overhauls with no decarboning and only carby maintenance,regular servicing etc,no opening of the engine..

I'm looking at Ed3 Rev 0 (2012), operators, installation, maintenance and heavy maintenance manuals. Searching the pdf's for "ignition" or "plugs" or "CDCI" I get no hits which refer to that statement.If you can find the source, I'd be very interested.

 

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Hi..as far as I am aware I have seen no Rotax publication that states about grounding the CDI's when carrying out maintenance proceedures other than If the aircraft has seperate Toggle type switches,then no problem,however as Maj pointed out if you have the combined starter and ign switch then you need to isolate and or ground the CDI modules.I know of only one site that states/ shows this and this is Rotax Owners Assoc Network vidio on Direct compression proceedure in which they advise to disconnect the 6pin nylon connector from the stator to the CDI'S consquently isolating them from the voltage imput during cranking..

As we have recently had isolated CDI module failures I aggree that it would be a good cockpit practice to attempt the first start using only one switch and alternate switches with next start as a means of checking if the CDI'S might be getting a bit tired at the low cranking RPM ..

Rotax needs to be aware of field problems and the more imput from Forums like these can only be to every operators advantage.Thats my opinion anyway!!

Safe and happy sky's..Richard