V-8 powered Seabee

On Mon, 27 Oct 2003 17:46:54 -0600, "John Stricker"
wrote:

I don't know what problems they had or continue to have, nothing has
been printed, published, alluded to or rumoured in regards any trouble
they ran into.

My point exactly. This was a very large project. You know it and I know
it. They had to hand build the first PSRU. They had to have a custom
wiring harness made. They had to use a non-stock memcal. They had to fab
dozens, if not hundreds, of brackets, mounts, controls and so on.

IIRC, you used to be a mechanic in a Soob dealership. In your entire
mechanical experience, can you EVER envision a project of that magnitude
truly being "trouble-free"? I've been in on a lot of projects much less
involved than that, and I can't envision it. Things you never thought of,
that never occurred to you, come up and bite you in the butt at places you
never envisioned. That's my point. I do not believe that any project like
this can be trouble free. Can it be successful? Yes, depending on your
criteria. But not trouble free.

I'd expect that there might be changes made, configurations tried and
possibly modified, all prior to the extended test period. If they
encountered cooling problems during the initial rigging phase, I'd
assume that they would make the necessary changes and then continue
with the testing.

It's a fairly basic setup, the engine is not running at full capacity
so it is not overstressed. The ignition and fuel injection are
operating within normal parameters. The only unknowns are the PSRU
and cooling. The cooling is obvious and if inadaquate, will make that
fact known immediately. The airplanes are flying wherever and
whenever they want to so I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that
cooling appears adaquate.

That leaves just the PSRU as an unknown (to me). They now have over
800 hours on the initial airplane. That's not a lifetime but it's
sure not bad for starters.

It seems all auto conversions have a built in conundrum: None of them
have enough hours to satisfy those who feel auto conversions are
risky. Yet the only way to build those hours is to continue to fly
them. But flying them draws the ire of those who say they are unsafe.

What to do?

How long must auto conversions fly to fly to prove their viability?
500 hours? 1000 hours? 1500 hours? Were the original Lycomings and
Continentals tested for that long? Should all experimenting stop
because some appear inadaquately thought through or improperly
assembled? Or should we learn from the failures of those who tried
ahead of us? In other words, should we seek solutions to known
problems, or give up?

Corky Scott