Joshua's RV-9A Project

I’ve talked to both Jim and Tom Berge over the last couple days, and I think we have a plan for moving forward on the engine trouble.  While a pull-thru test came out clean, Aerosport recommended a differential compression check — I don’t have the tools for that, so I’m going to meet up with Jim tomorrow morning and we’ll give it a go.  I’ll also check up on the idle mixture and make adjustments as necessary to obtain the recommended 25-50 RPM rise at ICO.

If all that comes out clean, I’ll flight test over the airport to see if the problem recurs, and go from there.

To verify whether the #2 EGT drops I’m seeing are real (from a dead cylinder) or false (from a faulty EGT probe or wire), tonight I switched the probes between the #2 and #4 cylinders.  If the drops continue on channel 2, the problem is with the sensor…if they move to channel 4, the problem is real with the cylinder.  I’ll be examining the logs carefully after each flight.

Reinstalled the RH seat pans after the antenna adventure the other day; I put a blob of RTV over each of the “spare” holes in the belly skin/doubler, to prevent unnecessary ingress of water and/or air.

Completed the just-released Service Bulletin from Van’s, which required checking that all the wing bolts are inserted before further flight (apparently, some have been found where the two bolts in the spar web were never installed).  Between having the RH seat pan off, and having a plethora of photos of that area to look at, it was simple to verify that all my bolts are installed & torque-sealed.