There has been one incident where there was a sudden and complete loss
of coolant. The builder had capped an unused hose connection on the
block by folding a short length of heater hose in half and hose clamping
everything in place. Though the engine's head gaskets had not been set
up as recommended the plane had more than 800 hours on the meter. The
builder had no problems to this point because of his procedure of fully
bring the engine to temp before requiring take off power. This day he
neglected his own warm up rules and took off before full saturation. The
head gasket blew pressuring the coolant system. The pressure peak blew
the clamped hose plug and instantly emptied the coolant from the engine.

After trying to find a hole between traffic on a couple of highways the
pilot was flying parallel to traffic on his intended landing highway
when the engine quit. Flight time since loss of coolant at that point
was 15 minutes. The pilot and passenger in the Mustang II skidded on top
of a fence beside the road for several yards then tipped over into a
water filled ditch. Because of the recently installed roll over
structure he and his passenger walked away.

The plane had minimal damage and was quickly repaired. The engine when
disassembled was found to have not seized. Nothing wrong could be found
in the engine. After several days of running the engine the builder
finally discovered that the culprit was a water caused short in the
ignition system and steps were take to eliminate that weak point.

This incident is the only instantaneous loss of coolant of which I am
aware. Point is that sudden loss of coolant does not suddenly stop the
engines power making capability ....as would loss of fuel or loss of oil
in this or any other engine.

Corky Scott wrote:

On Thu, 30 Oct 2003 12:45:26 GMT, "Eric Miller"
wrote:

"Barnyard BOb --" wrote in message
.. .

Some years ago a company was building Ford engines for installation in
homebuilts. They did a couple of experiments of running the engine, with
a prop, without coolant. On both occasions the broken-in engines ran for
30+ minutes. Both stopped due to expansion of the pistons in the bores.
When the engines cooled the coolant systems were filled and the engines
started. Both ran and turned the prop at the same rpm. But also both
engine's head gaskets were shot and the metallurgy of both the heads and
the pistons had changed to the point of all having to be relegated to
the scrap pile. Crank and rod bearings were still in good condition.

Bruce A. Frank
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

What RPM?
What power level?

Unless producing realistic in-flight power....
is there value in this exercise beyond PR?


Barnyard BOb --

What PR? As I read it, if you're cooling system fails you basically have
enough time to set it down then you're looking at a new engine.

Eric

So far, I've not read of any reported catastrophic coolant losses in
the Ford powered airplanes. There have been instances (I've read of
two in Bruce's newletter) in which the head gasket began leaking.
This resulted in pressure readings that were abnormal, and the pilots
in both instances noticed them.

The airplanes were flown back to their home fields and the head
gaskets were replaced. In one instance, the airplane was a fair
distance from the field. Inflight coolant temperatures did not change
much, it was the pressure when the engine was shut down that got the
pilot's attention.

When you think about it, where where might a catastrophic leak occur
and how? Could a hose burst? A hole develop in the radiator? Those
things normally don't just blow up and spew out everything, they leak
very slowly at first, and a thorough preflight should include looking
for signs of coolant leakage I'd think.

When you put together a water cooled auto conversion, you use premium
hoses and radiators, right? You don't install aged and hardened parts
do you? Well I'm not going to anyway.

Corky Scott

--
Bruce A. Frank, Editor "Ford 3.8/4.2L Engine and V-6 STOL
Homebuilt Aircraft Newsletter"
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| on all aspects of alternative |
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