The end of the Annual Enema -or- The Fat Boy Flies Again

Well, Murphy finally decided to move on... The Kid decided to work on
Saturday - after saying he would not be there, which got the evil eye
from me...
We assembled, and wiped, and polished, and tightened, and loosened and
retightened... Finally after 4 hours it looked like an airplane
again...The engines were test run... And by the third run we had found
all the wires that had been jerked off , fuel valves that had been
unhooked, etc.
That was way more ground running than I normally do on a fresh engine,
but you play the hand you are dealt..

Fired up, taxied straight out, rolled onto the active and put the lash
to the old boy, straight up to 5500, balls to the wall... That got
the temps on the new cylinders, right up there... It was quite handy
that the outside temp was 14 degrees (F)... When straight and level
pulled the props back to 2600, left the throttles to the firewall,
leaned only until the engines ran smooth - then proceeded to fly great
circles about the aerodrome...

Rumor was that the ECI cylinders would seat the rings in a half hour,
said event to be announced by a sudden drop in CHT... At 18 minutes
of boring around in the yellow arc there was a drop in CHT of 8C my
CHT gauges read in *&^$%#! centigrade ... This drop occurred over
roughly two minutes of the gauge barely inching down... At 34 minutes
the gauge got nervous again, and at 36 minutes there was a definite
drop over roughly another two minutes... A solid 20C decrease in
total... the gauge nailed the new number and stayed there for another
half hour, so bored and thirsty, I decided to land... It took 15
minutes to go downhill with the engines still putting out power to
avoid pulling a vacuum above the rings on the new cylinders... It
burned a half quart of oil seating the rings...

Theoretically, we are good to go for another year...

Denny and Fat Albert the Apache...