First I want to thank all of you who have responded over the last few
months
regarding my rough running 912. I tried almost every possible fix and nothing
worked. I was still short 500 rpm and very slow to take off. My europa would
also back fire and miss whenever a load was put on the engine. I finally
transported
my plane from Xenia Ohio to East Troy WI and had a certified rotax mechanic
troubleshoot the problem for me. What he found was shocking. Two of the
cylinders had low compression. One of which reading 43/80psi, and the other just
barely 70/80. He thin removed the head expecting to find a cracked ring, but
instead found a corroded exhaust seat. The corrosion was so bad that the valve
was leaking thus the low compression. This engine was purchased and remained
crated and stored in a climate controlled building at Flightcrafters in Florida
until put on the aircraft in the fall of 2006. The bottom line is the fact
that I was trying to fly my europa on three cylinde
rs. Lakewood aviation had my jumping through all these hoops and rebuilding my
carbs to the tune of $180. Buying a pneumatic carb sync kit $160. They even had
me completely remove my gas tank system out of the equation by having my wife
hold a 5 gal can of fuel beside the plane while I did a full engine run. Here
is the real rub! I'm still waiting to hear from rotax on what they plan to
do about my new $15000 engine that is corroded inside. I'm hoping that they will
realize that they need to do the right thing and replace a very defective
engine.
Years ago I worked as a manager at a seafood steak house and very quickly
realized that a customer who gets a bad meal will tell everyone he meets for
years about the bad meal he got at your restaurant. I hope Rotax does not make
that mistake. I was very impressed when the USAF started flying predators
with rotax engines, and I would hope that Rotax would want to keep their good
standing in the experimental aircraft field. Any thou
ghts that any of you may have on this dilemma would be greatly appreciated.
MSGT SCOTT L. DINGMAN RRT, USAF RET
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