Any chance of water in the fuel line? We had a similar incident (C172)
on the way to OSH last summer. The plane was parked at BTV all night
before being topped off early the next morning. Since we had just added
some nitrogen to the strut and all of our camping stuff was in the back,
the plane sat a bit nose high, even when taxiing. The problem didn't
appear until we leveled off at 10,000 ft. Just after leveling off, the
engine sputtered for a few seconds. (I think it took me about 2 seconds
to pull the carb heat on and set the mixture to full rich.) It was,
understandably, a bit of an eye opener. It subsided quickly. I thought
it might be carb ice and the carb heat cleared it up (although we were
developing full power all the way up). But it happened again a minute
or so later. I was within seconds of declaring an emergency and was
already looking for the airport the GPS indicated was closest when the
problem went away. Since we were at 10,000 ft, I was not too
uncomfortable continuing (we had 3 airports within gliding distance).
The problem never resurfaced. I presume that we had bit of water in the
tanks that missed the sump due to the attitude of the plane on the
ground and during the climb. That was at least 200 hours ago, and the
plane has been fine since. Just a thought.



Mike Z. wrote:
Just when I thought we had the Skyhawk ready to blast off next week for Florida.....we took a little ride Saturday and on the way
back she ran rough for milliseconds on two occasions. The 1st time was so fast, Donna didn't even notice. The second time she was
expecting it.

Any ideas?

The cylinders were gone through about 200 hrs ago.

In-flight mag check was fine. The mags are newish and maintained.

Leaned according to the POH.

We did seem to be picking up a bit of carb ice. (and by the way, how rough is rough when the ice melts)

Should I worry? Maybe do a MMO injection and a special dance? Plan to drive to Florida because the wx will be crap anyway?

Mike Z







--
Remove "2PLANES" to reply.