FYI: Dec 12 MythBusters: Airplane Hour

Bertie the Bunyip wrote:

Excellent. You must have made at least one journey with someone
beating the fuel pump to keep it going! Everyone has. I had to have
my wife kick the firewall of my Morris Minor Traveller in the middle
of London in rush hour traffic to keep us moving once... And I was in
charge of thumping the rear wheel well in an MAG for about 200 miles
to keep it going.
Turns out it was good training. They work almost exactly the same was
as a shower of sparks wxciter box in a jet's starter ignition.
Machines are machines.

Bertie

Good grief, and here I thought I had a unique experience when I drove half
way across New Mexico and Colorado in the wee hours (nothing open) in my 62
Austin Healy, the fuel pump hidden directly under the removable left rear
seat (for dwarfs) drifting in and out of consciousness, and being kept alive
by reaching around the seat with the handle of the brass knock off mallet to
give it the occassional wake up call. Finally was able to get a universal
electric pump in Colorado Springs when a garage finally opened up.

"ManhattanMan" wrote in
:

Bertie the Bunyip wrote:

Excellent. You must have made at least one journey with someone
beating the fuel pump to keep it going! Everyone has. I had to have
my wife kick the firewall of my Morris Minor Traveller in the middle
of London in rush hour traffic to keep us moving once... And I was in
charge of thumping the rear wheel well in an MAG for about 200 miles
to keep it going.
Turns out it was good training. They work almost exactly the same was
as a shower of sparks wxciter box in a jet's starter ignition.
Machines are machines.

Bertie

Good grief, and here I thought I had a unique experience when I drove
half way across New Mexico and Colorado in the wee hours (nothing
open) in my 62 Austin Healy, the fuel pump hidden directly under the
removable left rear seat (for dwarfs) drifting in and out of
consciousness, and being kept alive by reaching around the seat with
the handle of the brass knock off mallet to give it the occassional
wake up call. Finally was able to get a universal electric pump in
Colorado Springs when a garage finally opened up.




Nah they all did it when the points got pitted. I flew a twin Beech for
a couple of weeks that had some sticking wiper points for the gear motor
which would allow extension easily enough, but not retraction. The
points were mounted underneath the cockpit floor, so if you stomped on
the floor after you lifted the handle, it came up. the airplane was
acutally the best '18 I ever flew, but we had some difficulty tracking
this part down. Cleaning the points with emory paper worked for a while,
but the problem always came back.


And that should have been MGA, and not
MAG above!
But ever Lucas fuel pump ever made did that trick evenually! Don't even
get me started on voltage regulators!


Bertie