Went for a 450km drive this morning

As I have to do 1000kms to run in the new engine I decided to get up at 4.15am this morning and go for a drive. I hadn't decided where I was going to go so just jumped in and started heading towards the city. As I was driving along I thought it would be good to go inland a bit before heading over to the coast and back to home in Duncraig so I headed towards Armadale and when I got to the Brookton Highway I turned left and headed towards Brookton. I ended up turning right at Brookton and heading back to Perth via Narrogin and Williams. All up I did approx 450kms and as I have already done approx 50kms I am now half way there with the run-in.

The engine is running real sweet and feels really strong. Lumpy did a great job with the run-in tune and he limited the revs to 5500rpm on the Power FC just in case I couldn't wait and decided to go a bit silly! For those of you who don't know what entails a good run-in you are not alone. The only experience I have had with running in engines is with aircraft. We had to replace the engine in our Cessna 210 a few years ago when it spun a main bearing (and thats another interesting story as it happened in-flight!) so I read a great article tiltled "Don't baby your engine" (go to http://www.casa.gov.au/fsa/2002/sep/36-38.pdf if you want a good read). It's a great article and makes a lot of sense so what I did was cruise along at 110kmh in 5th at 3300rpm then dropped it back to 4th bringing the revs up to 3800rpm and cruise at that for a couple of k's and then revving it out to 5500rm before changing back into 5th (going a little faster than 110kmh!). I did this repeatedly and also made sure to wind it out in every gear when starting off. Next step is an oil change and then another 500kms to finish the run-in.

Not sure where to this time but I'll let you know.

New engine is running!

It's been a long wait but finally the new engine is in and running. We fired it up last week but it was blowing clouds of black smoke out the back due to overfuelling, I thought by fitting the standard ECU that it would run OK so I would be able to run it in but that theory didn't work! So I connected the Power FC back up and Alistair from Autoworx said I could adjust the injectors (I have 740cc's) temporarily to wind them back from 100% to 50%. Once we did that it ran fine and got me home. Certainly feels revvy!

I then called Glenn Campbell (Lumpy) who used to own Hyperdrive in Perth. He is the guru for tuning Power FC's and he did my last engine which produced 300rwhp without much modification. I have known Lumpy for years and have followed his career with interest. Since selling Hyperdrive he now owns and manages a drift team and competes in the national Drift series. He is getting a few sponsors on board due to quite good success and is always looking for more so if you are interested contact me and I will forward you his details.

A couple of days ago we put it on the dyno and did a run-in tune. I now have to do 500kms and then an oil change and then another 500kms and oil change before we can get it back on the dyno for a full tune. I think I will be restricted on horsepower due to the relatively small Garrett turbo I have fitted but my theory was that if I was unhappy with the output I could always change the turbo.

I will let you know how the next dyno goes.. hoping for around 350rwhp so we'll wait and see.

Flying the Searey

A while back I mentioned that I was going to buy and build a little kit Seaplane. I went to Sydney recently and flew the Australian distributors (Rob Loneragan of Searey Australia) Searey. Rob took me up in his own Searey that he built back in 2000 as a demo and for his enjoyment as he loves flying and Searey's in particular and I can see why.....

What a beautiful little aircraft!

We took off from Bankstown airport and followed the river to Sydney Harbour where we flew at 500ft all the way to the coast. The harbour bridge stands at a height of 440ft so at 500ft you can imagine what a birdseye view we had flying over the southern pylon.... it was spectacular!

I also took some video footage including taking off and landing on the water that I will load onto Youtube or somewhere shortly and provide a link so you can check it out.

My kit is leaving the US at the end of August and should arrive around late October/early November.... can't wait....