Engine failure

Peter R. wrote:

My fuel-injected, turbo-normalized Bonanza had a newly rebuilt engine
installed last February. Upon completion of the work, I took the aircraft
up for the proper first flight break-in. When I landed, the engine quit
just as I touched down (low idle) on the runway.

I was able to restart and taxied back to talk to the mechanic. He adjusted
the low-idle mixture so I took the aircraft up for the second flight
break-in. Again, upon landing the engine quit.

Suspecting something else now, the mechanic ran the aircraft on the ground
and was able to duplicate the problem. He then suspected the fuel pump so
he took it off and sent it back to the company who supplied it to the
engine rebuilder for inspection. The fuel pump inspectors discovered metal
shavings inside the fuel pump that were cutting off fuel flow at low idle.
That opened up an entire finger pointing session. Nice...

The source of the shavings was never identified but it was concluded that
somehow they were introduced when the engine was on the test cell.

I had a similar situation with a carburetor on the club's Archer. It
had been at the maintenance shop for some carb work. After ground
testing and a short flight around the patch, everything seemed be
working fine. So I took off and flew home. On final my descent rate
was a little fast, so I went to tweak the throttle and nothing happened.
Since I was less than a half a mile from the threshold with plenty of
altitude, it was no big deal to dead stick it in. I actually had enough
speed left on landing that had I been going the other way I probably
could have made it off the runway. (The runway at our airport has a
slight grade and I was landing uphill.) Instead I rolled to a stop
almost exactly mid-way down the runway and had to call for a tow because
the engine wouldn't restart.

It was discovered afterward that the shop that had worked on the carb
had gotten a washer stuck between the top half and bottom half of the
carb that prevented the float from properly shutting off the fuel flow.
The result was a flooded engine on final.


-m
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