Does anyone experience junk like this? Long story/need advice

I thought I simplify and remove the prop oil return line on my engine since I am going with a Catto fixed pitch prop. The word of the day is "Simplify". It just rolls off the tongue. Sim-pli-fy.........ahhhhh.

I have an IO-360-A1A. The front plug on the crank is removed already because it was driving a constant speed prop in its former life.

With Service Instruction 1435 between my formerly Cheetos stained fingers, I gave it a good read to understand what needed to happen next. It said to either pierce or remove the rear plug, located about 7-8" down the crank shaft. Oh yeah, there is also an oil return tube running across this cavity a couple of inches in front of the rear plug. Fortunately, this tube is notched to give access to the rear plug. Easy, right? Sorry, forgot that we're talking about an airplane engine or anything airplane for that matter. Now its time to figure out where the catch is.

Being the often uninformed mechanic I am, I shined a flashlight down the crankshaft cavity and could see the plug with a 3/16 hex opening for removal. I ran to the Home Depot Aircraft tools aisle and purchased a socket drive 3/16" ball end Allen wrench as it was all they had that would reach waaaay back there. Hurried back to the hangar, grabbed my socket wrench, inserted into crankshaft and it fit like a charm. I began to twist the wrench and 1 second later the ball end snapped off in the rear plug.

Time to research....
I Googled something along the lines of "how to remove a broken allen wrench ball head from a bolt". I found a bunch of folks wondering the same thing. I wonder if they could be genetically related to me? I saw things like touch it with a welder, fuse the rod, then pull it out........maybe for a farm tractor. One said to cut a slot with a Dremel tool and use a flathead screw driver to unscrew the plug. Dremels aren't too big but its not going down that tiny hole sideways either. Some guy said try to hit it with compressed air ( "You'll shoot an eye out kid"). So there I was with the world of Google folks trying to figure this dilemma out. I thought I could hoist the plane up by the tail from the roof of the hangar and gently tap the nose on the floor in order to get this ball head jarred out of the socket. After all, this solution is about as good as the solutions others had to offer. Then it hit me!!!

I went back to the hangar, grabbed a 12" piece of hinge pin, dug a tube labeled Super Glue out of my tool chest and dabbed some on the end of the pin and stuck it to the severed allen wrench ball head nestled firmly in that dang rear pipe plug. I held pressure for 60 seconds then pulled. Nothing!!! Didn't even stick!! Not even tackey! I tried this over and over about 7-8 times. Threw it all on the floor disgusted. This Super Glue ain't so Super!! I picked up the tube in disgust and read the fine print under the bold faced, large font SUPER GLUE. The fine print said, "remover"........really. In fine print, under the words SUPER GLUE!

I drove 9 miles home to my shop and grabbed a 3/16" wooden dowel rod from my woodworking days (because it is porous). Then off to the Home Depot Aircraft Adhesives Department a couple of miles away. I put on my best pair of glasses and prepared myself mentally to examine the glue labels carefully. I purchased Lock Tite Super Glue Gel. Twenty something miles later arrived back at the hangar with very low expectations truthfully.

Took the dowel and dabbed some Super Glue Gel on one end. Did I worry about sticking my fingers together??? Heck no! I have SUPER GLUE remover on hand! Stuck the dowel down the crank and planted it on the broken off hex head ball. Pulled it out and felt nothing. Threw the dowel on the floor. Argh!!! I got my flashlight, shined it down the hole and lo and behold, no allen wrench ball in my rear oil plug any longer. I looked at the dowel that I threw to the floor and there it was, the ball tip of my Allen wrench from **** glued neatly to the tip!!! Hooooray!! This was a good day!!

So, if you stayed with me this long I have a question. Is this rear plug usually hard to get loose? Is there a trick, etc in unscrewing this thing? If its not going to come out, I'll keep the oil return line. Geesh!

I now know to never use a ball head Allen wrench on a tight screw/plug. Duh! Read that comment all over the Internet today. Live and learn. New knowledge to file in my brain of what not to do.

I hope you get a few answers to this as I am going to replace my internal crank plug next week and I'll probably follow in your footsteps knowing my luck.

Cheers

Thanks for the humorous write-up!

Another option

Ben,
Search the Internet for another option besides removing the plug. Seems like there used to be a kit you could buy that would eliminate the need to remove the hex plug but I think you had to retain and redirect the prop oil return line. Im thinking this option was for the folks who wanted to convert to fixed prop but retain the ability to easily convert back to CS without too much trouble.
Good luck on your adventure.
Cj

Just a question - since the engines come with the front plug in place for fixed and it gets removed, why not reinstall the front plug?

This is a good story for justifying the extra price of Snap-On tools, or MAC or the like. I have a few Snap-On for this very reason. 2 AM and I really need that bolt off to get this engine out, and snapped 3 craftsman sockets. I used the blue wrench that time, but got a Snap-On and it never happened again! The "but they have the same lifetime replacement guarantee" argument does not mean anything in this situation. And - - don't use the ball end allen for high torque work. Allen sockets are one tool that demands commercial quality, forged, not sintered.

Thanks for an interesting story!

Too funny!

Now to the serious stuff........do you want to sell the old governor line?

Does anyone experience junk like this? Long story/need advise

I just did what you are trying to do. I am converting a constant speed to fixed, RV-9A. The rear hex plug has to be removed, pierced, or entire rear plug removed. That oil slinger tube lubricates the main bearing. With a constant speed, the governor supplies the oil, without, the oil comes from the hollow crank. If you damage the oil slinger, the crank has to be removed to repair. With that in mind, I used the local FBO mx shop to remove the hex plug, that rear plug can have or not have the hex plug. The mechanic first used a 3/16 hex wrench which promptly spun, next he drove in an ease out to get the hex plug to spin, it did. The entire hex plug boss broke loose and dropped behind the rear plug. Now with a large hole in the center and the hex plug and it's boss lying in the crankshaft behind the rear plug, he pulled out his slide hammer and fabricated a "cat's paw" to hook the rear plug and pull it out. After about 40 minutes of failed attempts and 3 different fabrications, it came out with no damage to the oil slinger. A magnet removed the errant hex plug and boss. He then installed the front plug. The only damage was to my wallet, $209 labor bill. But compared to an engine teardown to remove the crank to repair the oil slinger tube, probably a good deal. Dan

drone_pilot said:

The word of the day is "Simplify". It just rolls off the tongue. Sim-pli-fy.........ahhhhh.
.
.
.
With Service Instruction 1435 between my formerly Cheetos stained fingers, I gave it a good read to understand what needed to happen next.
.
.
.
I thought I could hoist the plane up by the tail from the roof of the hangar and gently tap the nose on the floor in order to get this ball head jarred out of the socket. After all, this solution is about as good as the solutions others had to offer. Then it hit me!!!

.
.
The fine print said, "remover"........really. In fine print, under the words SUPER GLUE!
.
.
.
Did I worry about sticking my fingers together??? Heck no! I have SUPER GLUE remover on hand! Stuck the dowel down the crank and planted it on the broken off hex head ball.
.
.
.
I now know to never use a ball head Allen wrench on a tight screw/plug. Duh! Read that comment all over the Internet today. Live and learn. New knowledge to file in my brain of what not to do.

Click to expand...

Great read. You need to write a column in Kitplanes of "What not to Do". Would be entertaining and useful.

BillL said:

Just a question - since the engines come with the front plug in place for fixed and it gets removed, why not reinstall the front plug?

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Reinstalling the front plug without opening up the rear plug is a terrific way to get oil all over the windscreen and possibly lose oil pressure in flight. The front plug must be in place, but it's not designed to retain oil pressure. This is why the rear plug has to be pierced, or have the pipe plug removed if one is installed. The oil pressure comes from the nose bearing lubrication that finds its way through the CS oil transfer port into the crankshaft. If the rear plug doesn't have the hole opened up for drainage, this oil has nowhere to go and the pressure builds until the front plug blows out!

Skylor

On the plus side, you now have an allen wrench without a ball tip... Just grind the remaining end flat, and you'll have a much stronger tool to use on the plug the next time.

Assuming the removal of the ball didn't make the wrench so short that it will no longer reach the plug...

skylor said:

Reinstalling the front plug without opening up the rear plug is a terrific way to get oil all over the windscreen and possibly lose oil pressure in flight. The front plug must be in place, but it's not designed to retain oil pressure. This is why the rear plug has to be pierced, or have the pipe plug removed if one is installed. The oil pressure comes from the nose bearing lubrication that finds its way through the CS oil transfer port into the crankshaft. If the rear plug doesn't have the hole opened up for drainage, this oil has nowhere to go and the pressure builds until the front plug blows out!

Skylor

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OK, I looked up Lycoming SI-1435 - to understand what you said. I also looked down my IO360 M1B with a camera, the back plug is in place. This engine also came with the governor line in place. I am a little confused. I had thought that this engine was ready for a fixed pitch and I removed the forward plug for the CS. So, I assume that the pressure from oil would have just leaked back through the governor line to vent pressure. Is this correct? So, in that case, the OP could have left the gov line in place, used the correct plate gasket to allow leakage and just have reinstalled the forward plug?

What am I missing?

If I'm not mistaken, there is a prop governor cover with a slot milled in it that will allow the oil to return back to the crank case. You do need to be careful that you have the correct milled cover and not the flat cover. I do have the correct cover. I just like less parts if I can get away with it. That's why if I cannot remove this rear plug easily, I'll just keep the oil return tube in place and install the special milled cover to allow the oil to bypass.

NOTE: Don't go off of my words. This is just my understanding. Please chime in if I am missing something.

I plan to keep the return tube and my governor just in case I ever change to a constant speed prop. For now, I like the weight saved, simplicity, and hopefully less future maintenance issues by using the catto. I equate the weight savings with a slower return to planet earth in the case of an engine out.

Also, thanks for the nice responses. Sometimes the most frustrating things in life can become the most laughable. I just wanted to share the laugh.

Descent rate

Perhaps a little off-topic, but the OP mentioned a slower return to earth with the fixed pitch Catto. Does anyone have any hard data on descent rate of a Catto like this versus a constant speed Hartzell dialed all the way back to low RPM, course pitch? Always wondered??

Bill Dicus said:

Perhaps a little off-topic, but the OP mentioned a slower return to earth with the fixed pitch Catto. Does anyone have any hard data on descent rate of a Catto like this versus a constant speed Hartzell dialed all the way back to low RPM, course pitch? Always wondered??

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It's my understanding that given an engine failure, you'll have no oil pressure to run a cs prop to coarse pitch.

Descent

As long as the prop is windmilling I think there will be oil pressure available to achieve the course pitch. Has anybody experienced this?

Why is it these RV Kits do that?

Great story and so true about the Crazy glue remover. Reading it brought to mind the many times I have been doing something similiar while building this plane.

Thanks for sharing, hope the extraction goes well from here.

The windmilling prop will cause oil pressure to be produced and thus one should be able to run the prop back to full coarse pitch, with a few minor caveats:
1) you need to have some engine oil left!
2) the engine needs to be turning - some engine failures preclude this
3) the governor and prop need to be in functioning order, something which can't always be guaranteed following an engine failure (think of oil flow obstructions, sheered drives etc)

Peter Garrison of FLYING magazine fame conducted a test in his Melmoth II with a stopped vs coarse-pitch C/S prop. He also tested with open throttle vs closed throttle. His conclusions were that a windmilling C/S prop, with throttle set wide open, gave the best glide distance. The rate of descent with a stopped prop was less than a windmilling coarse prop, but the altitude lost in stopping the prop outweighed the advantage in descent rate (unless you were gliding from somewhere way up in the flight levels). In that story he cited several references which would make good reading on the topic. Now if only I could find that issue of FLYING...

Junk like this?

Thanks Mark. Think I read a summary of this article years ago but had forgotten it. If it shows up will let you know...

Ben, your account reminds me of no small number of my (mis)adventures/learning experiences! You seem to have an excellent attitude about the whole thing. That said, is there any chance the broken tool part could have been retrieved with a magnet?

It is possible that a rare earth magnet may have worked although I'm not sure of the makeup of the material in the Allen wrench, Can you say "pot metal"? Also, there are a lot of things for a magnet to stick to down there and that's all I needed was for the magnet to come loose requiring me fish out two stuck parts.

I honestly considered a magnet but thought I stood a better chance with the stick and superglue. I have not had too much luck super-gluing metal to metal so I figured a gel glue with the porosity of the wooden stick against the metal ball might work (Aggie Engineering). As it turned out, it worked first try. That's not too common in my world! But thank God I got it out!!! Its a sinking feeling when a ball about the size of a BB could cause major problems and expense.

I'm taking some previous advice on this post and getting the best quality tool I can find to go at it again. That's kinda my philosophy on tools anyway but bought the cheap tool because I had "GetterDoneItis" and didn't want to wait. Turns out the cheap tool route combined with my lack of brain engagement about using a hex ball head on a tight part bit me. Cheap seems to work okay for sanding and grinding but I find high quality (usually expensive - there I said it!) works much better for turning, cranking, cutting, drilling/machining. Just my personal philosophy.

Still trying to get that plug out?
On a change over to Fixed- I dealt with the rear plug by using a long center punch, knocked a 1/4" hole in it which did the job. The real fun came 2 weeks later when I was asked to put the C/S back on... Now I really had to remove the rear plug... I used a modified long cold chisel to open up the hole big enough to get another modified cold chisel (narrowed and ground to a kind of fish hook shape) & used it as a puller.
Those chisels hopefully don't come in handy again someday soon...

drone_pilot said:

I have not had too much luck super-gluing metal to metal

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Try JB Weld

Canadian_JOY said:

Peter Garrison of FLYING magazine fame conducted a test in his Melmoth II with a stopped vs coarse-pitch C/S prop. He also tested with open throttle vs closed throttle. His conclusions were that a windmilling C/S prop, with throttle set wide open, gave the best glide distance. The rate of descent with a stopped prop was less than a windmilling coarse prop, but the altitude lost in stopping the prop outweighed the advantage in descent rate (unless you were gliding from somewhere way up in the flight levels). In that story he cited several references which would make good reading on the topic. Now if only I could find that issue of FLYING...

Click to expand...

Note that Peter did it with a metal prop, if you're flying with a wood prop the altitude loss necessary to stop it turning after an engine failure is about zero (assuming you still have engine compression). If I had a wood prop, even cruising around casual altitudes (2-3K agl) i'd try to stop it just to gain the glide distance.

drone_pilot said:

If I'm not mistaken, there is a prop governor cover with a slot milled in it that will allow the oil to return back to the crank case. You do need to be careful that you have the correct milled cover and not the flat cover. I do have the correct cover. I just like less parts if I can get away with it. That's why if I cannot remove this rear plug easily, I'll just keep the oil return tube in place and install the special milled cover to allow the oil to bypass.

NOTE: Don't go off of my words. This is just my understanding. Please chime in if I am missing something.

Click to expand...

The plate has been discussed before here on VAF. The part number is Lycoming #72378, Alt governor cover plate; SI1435 Apr25 1986 Conversion of CS to FP and vice versa....

maniago said:

The plate has been discussed before here on VAF. The part number is Lycoming #72378, Alt governor cover plate; SI1435 Apr25 1986 Conversion of CS to FP and vice versa....

Click to expand...

You can recognize it by a raised area on the outside.



It has the notch mentioned on the engine side -

Magnet worked for me

Broke an allen tip off removing my old Terra transponder last week. Placed a horseshoe magnet on the remaining part of the wrench and getting the broken part out was easy as falling off a log. Filed down the wrench to a flat end and used it to complete the job.
Hopefully the transponder repair is as painless...
Patrick

Update/next question

Not cheap but I purchased a Snap-On 3/8" socket drive, 6" long, 3/16" Allen Wrench. The rear plug was in tight. Was cautious on the wrench pressure but with some patience, the threads broke loose and I was able to remove the plug. I spent a few minutes fishing it out from behind the cross tube. If I have any input, I'd say to purchase the best tool you can find. I originally purchased a cheap tool and spent much of Saturday fishing it out of the engine after it broke. Sometimes cheap costs more.

Before I install the front plug on the crankshaft for fixed pitch, how should I clean the cavity? While removing the rear plug, I noticed some minor grunge that I'd like to remove before plugging. Likewise, is Permatex #3 acceptable for sealing the edges of the front plug? It is rated to 400 degrees on the data sheet.