I'm not sure how to go about this, but I will try. I have not abandoned the thread. There just hasn't been anything else to report as of yet. There are several reasons as to why, and I will try to put them into persepective for you.
First of all, I am dealing with an incredible personal crisis at home. I did not want to go on SuperCub.Org and put my personal business all up front out there for everybody to see, but since there are several people who want to know, I will just put it out there and let the chips fall where they may. I do know there are a few people who might be inquisitive as to why I haven't reported anything in the last several months. I do log on every now and then and scan over an article or two, but never for more than one or two minutes, not long enough to be able to make any comments or follow or absorb the content of any thread I would like to follow, then I have to quickly log off due to the circumstances I am dealing with. Let me explain.....
Right around the time all of this started happening to my engine, I had an incredible situation dumped in my lap, and it is one of the most intense situations I have ever had to deal with. My mother, 85 years old, was brought to my house and dumped out. She had been evicted from her apartment. What I did not know at the time, was that she was in the extremely advanced stages of Dementia and Alzheimers. And by extreme, I do mean EXTREME. So extreme, that she cannot be left alone for even a few minutes or there is no telling what she will do. I knew she wasn’t right, but I did not know the extent of it. At mention of a nursing home, she attempted to eat a handful of pills to commit suicide, saying she would kill herself if she was going to be put in a nursing home. This happened several times. She almost burnt the house down trying to use the kitchen stove, which runs on propane. She crapped on the bathroom floor and used a towel to decorate the floor and walls with French swirl patterns, laughing like a maniac the whole time. The list goes on and on. You would have to see it to believe it. If you have ever dealt with Dementia, you know what I am dealing with. If you have not, you will never understand. That is one reason why I never put anything on blast for everybody to see. It is never ending, non-stop, 24/7. She cannot be left alone. At all. And I have no one that can (or Will) help take care of her. It is like, my whole life went into Stop, Drop, Shutdown, Lockdown mode, almost overnight. I had to leave a job that pays me $55 an hour, to do this crap. And I hate it. And I hate it that I can't go on SuperCub.Org and explain to anybody exactly what is going on. I am just so overwhelmed with it all, that I just didn't know how to handle the SuperCub.Org situation, or what to do about it, as it is a small matter compared to what I am dealing with in the overall picture.
The airplane is still sitting in the hanger. I consider myself very fortunate that I can get a lady to come over here once every three weeks or so and babysit her for two hours At MOST, to allow me barely enough time to run over to the hanger in Bay City, (30 miles away) to roll the Cub out, crank it up, and let it idle at 1000 RPM for exactly 4 minutes, then shut it down, roll it back in the hanger, and rush back to the house. By the time I get there, the lady that babysits her while I was gone, is ready to pull all her own hair out and run screaming down the road due to the level of psychodrama-insanity she had to deal with for two hours. I am able to run the engine once every three or four weeks, if I am lucky. I don't run it any longer than 4 minutes though, just long enough to make sure no significant amount of rust forms on the cam or other internal engine parts.
But just so you will know, before this incredibly horriffic situation was dumped in my lap, I did manage to pull off a cylinder and take a look at it. and it appears to be just slightly out of round, which would cause a sufficient amount of blow-by. Also, the piston pin plugs on that cylinder appeared to be barely rubbing on the cylinder walls. At this point, that seems to be the problem. But due to my circumstances, I have been unable to investigate further.
So far, it has taken me several hours to get this far in this reply, having to stop every few minutes to deal with another psychodrama episode. It is incredibly unbelieveable, to the extent that at times I begin to question my own sanity as a result of being so totally exposed to and absorbed in HER insanity.
I know there are some people who followed this thread intently, myself more than any. I was in the process of removing the engine to take it to an engine shop for a teardown inspection when all of this started happening. When I saw how things were going from bad to worse than the day before on a daily basis, I had to stop my engine removal activities, (working alone with no one to help me with it), and just put everything back together so I could at least run the engine ever couple of weeks or so to keep it from getting just totally corroded inside until I can get this situation under control and get back to it. I know it is not advisable to do long ground runs, and I don't, just 4 minutes each time. Just enough to keep a little oil flowing through the engine until I can address the issues. It is the only thing I can do at this time. I was going to pull the engine for teardown, but I would have had to take it to another state for the teardown, and I could not do that due to how rapidly and intense this situation with my mother rapidly escalated to. Not a minute goes by that I am not thinking about all of this, the engine, SuperCub.Org, my mother, the whole thing. The level of stress is unbelieveable.
I log on to SuperCub.Org every chance I get, but I can not log on for more than a minute or two at a time, certainly not long enough to get into reading anything or commenting on anything, before I am sucked off into another spinning vortex of dementia. I am not avoiding anybody or anything like that, and I certainly did not abandon the thread, even though it might appear that way. She is sleeping at the moment, but will be awake any minute. She never sleeps more than 30 minutes at a time, and then she is back at it again. It’s like that round-the-clock.
I really did not want to put any of this on blast, put it out there for all to see. It is personal and extremely embarrassing. I cannot leave the house to go anywhere or do anything. At this point all I can do is endure it and try to find a way to get past it.
At some point, I don't know exactly when, all of this will pass, and I will be able to get my life back, and what I love most, flying and working on my Cub, and SuperCub.Org. I hate this situation more than any of yall. I am sorry if anybody is offended.
I am grateful to those who understand. To those who do not, no explanation is possible.
Thank you for your enquiry. And thank you for understanding. I will be back.
Tony Tucker
