frankh
Well Known Member
Hi Guys,
As you know I am the driving force behind the wingroot fuel pump system. Yesterday I had my first issue.
I thought I had a failed fuel pump after takeoff fom Hillsboro airport in Oregon. No problem as the sytem is designed with two independant fuel sources so I flew the half hour home on the one good pump. I climbed to 7500ft as this put in me gliding range of an airport for all of about 5 minutes on the trip and I loaded the tower/CTAF freq of each airport as I had it made dead stick if I had to.
Anway..I removed the fuel filter upstream of the offending pump and voila, the issue was a plugged filter from a length of proseal that had had flaked off, looked like where I had prosealed on the cover as it had that shape.
Interesting to me was that this "worm" of proseal was enough to plug the filter.
I remember I had changed to this sintered bronze in line filter at the same time I started using an E10 (ethanol blend) auto fuel. I was a little concerned at the time because the filter was much smaller than the paper disposable type I had been using before and the bronze element went almost up to the incoming tube of the filter housing..Good enough for fine particles, but not enough room to allow for a worm to enter the filter housing..I,e the worm really plugged the 3/8ths tube ahead instead of the filter itself.
So I am considering changing back to the paper disposable type...I only changed to the sintered bronze type because I read somewhere that water could cause a paper element to swell and cut off the fuel flow.
I can't seem to find a SB filter that has both lots of filter area and plenty of room to accomodate a worm (unless anyone can tell me where to get one) that will fit in the wingroot with all the other stuff.
So The next best thing is I am going to declare an experiment..Namely I am going to take the pair of old paper element filters that I kept and drop them into a bucket of water overnight and see if the pressure drop thru the filter goes up significantly. I will test the PD by the highly accurate method of blowing through the filter..
Any helpful comments..By which I mean not those like "You've modified the fuel system so your surely going to die" type coments are welcome..
Frank
As you know I am the driving force behind the wingroot fuel pump system. Yesterday I had my first issue.
I thought I had a failed fuel pump after takeoff fom Hillsboro airport in Oregon. No problem as the sytem is designed with two independant fuel sources so I flew the half hour home on the one good pump. I climbed to 7500ft as this put in me gliding range of an airport for all of about 5 minutes on the trip and I loaded the tower/CTAF freq of each airport as I had it made dead stick if I had to.
Anway..I removed the fuel filter upstream of the offending pump and voila, the issue was a plugged filter from a length of proseal that had had flaked off, looked like where I had prosealed on the cover as it had that shape.
Interesting to me was that this "worm" of proseal was enough to plug the filter.
I remember I had changed to this sintered bronze in line filter at the same time I started using an E10 (ethanol blend) auto fuel. I was a little concerned at the time because the filter was much smaller than the paper disposable type I had been using before and the bronze element went almost up to the incoming tube of the filter housing..Good enough for fine particles, but not enough room to allow for a worm to enter the filter housing..I,e the worm really plugged the 3/8ths tube ahead instead of the filter itself.
So I am considering changing back to the paper disposable type...I only changed to the sintered bronze type because I read somewhere that water could cause a paper element to swell and cut off the fuel flow.
I can't seem to find a SB filter that has both lots of filter area and plenty of room to accomodate a worm (unless anyone can tell me where to get one) that will fit in the wingroot with all the other stuff.
So The next best thing is I am going to declare an experiment..Namely I am going to take the pair of old paper element filters that I kept and drop them into a bucket of water overnight and see if the pressure drop thru the filter goes up significantly. I will test the PD by the highly accurate method of blowing through the filter..
Any helpful comments..By which I mean not those like "You've modified the fuel system so your surely going to die" type coments are welcome..
Frank