Building an Experimental PA11

Dan Gervae said:

Waiting for rain to quit so I can test fly, but I gained almost 75rpm on static run up. More than expected.

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Dan Gervae said:

I could not get that exhaust valve to go into the cylinder after I removed the keepers…. I worked it back and forth with lube but it got very tight at the end….then we checked the pushrod and it has a slight wobble. I bought this engine off of a prop strike aircraft…the A&P IA tore it down and had the internals sent in for magnaflux. He install new bearings in the lower end and made a log entry as well as stapled the yellow tags in the book. It is my belief that he did not disassemble the cylinders. I bought it cheap so I have decided to put a new top end on this…I spent all this time and money building a plane…no sense skimping here. Also, these are old serial number cylinders, so timing has to be set to 24 degrees to stop the cracking issues that plagued these units…I will now be able to reset the timing back to 28 degrees which should help give me a tiny bit more power. I’ll clean the cylinders I replace all up and put them on my shelf….I think they may even work on my C 90-12F on my floatplane?? Anyway…after Lycon said prices are going way up….$700 per jug on TCM models, I decided to go this route. I had considered souping up a bit with higher compression ratio and some porting. I’m going to go this route for now….maybe when my I start setting up my floats next spring I’ll have some work done while I’m building the rigging.

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