(dann mann) wrote in message ...
Speaking of Ercoupes, whatever happened to Captain Fred after his crash
out there at Gillespie Field? Of course the local media never followed
up
Dan ( La Mesa)

Ole Captain Fred is pretty scarce these days. His hangar is across
from mine and about 2 hangars down. He sublets it to a guy with an
older Citabria. I keep checking the NTSB reports, but the outcome is
still pending. It's May 11th of last year if anyone wants to read the
prelim report. I last saw him a couple months ago and he was walking
around O.K., maybe a little stiff walking.

When he flipped on the freeway, there was gas-spill on the pavement,
so we know there was some gas in there. From having owned 3 Ercoupes,
my opinion is (as if anyone really gives a royal ****) that he did run
out of gas, but from the 6 gallon header-tank which feeds the carb by
gravity. The 18 gallons in the wing tanks get pumped to the header
tank and recirculates back via an overflow line.

The reason I think this is, because that 6 gallons will last just
about an hour. The mechanic who installed the overhauled engine
ground ran it for 20 minutes and Fred was flying for about 45 minutes
when the engine quit as I recall. Supposedly the fuel pump checked
O.K., but there is a shut-off valve on the right sidewall, just about
where a passenger's right foot would be for the wing tanks. I suspect
that sometime during the engine removal and reinstall, that valve got
turned off, leaving only the 6 gallons available to burn and the spill
was from the unused wing-tank gas. I suspect that he was so
distracted with monitoring the sounds, instruments and temps, that he
neglected to notice the header-tank bobber going down. This is my
guess anyway.

I took a girlfriend to lunch one day a few years ago, and as we neared
the airport, I noticed the "header-tank bobber indicator" going down.
This only happens if you're burning the last 6 gallons in the header.
I knew I shouldn't have been into the header-tank. After landing, I
looked around and found that when my passenger placed her purse on the
floor next to her right foot, it pushed against the handle and shut
off the fuel to the header. The lever is so far tucked out of site,
hardly anyone ever uses it, or even knows about it, and I never
noticed that it wasn't safety-wired, which actually it shouldn't be in
case you need to shut off the fuel to the header. I safety-wired it
when we got back anyway. It flips off much too easily and there's no
way anyone could reach it in flight anyway.

My hangar partner is a retired airline mechanic and he's the one that
removed and reinstalled Fred's engine after it was overhauled along
with the carb elsewhere. He's still sweating it for another year as
to whether he'll get sued by Fred, even though he did nothing more
than remove and reinstall the engine and run it for 20 minutes. He
thought that maybe he plumbed the fuel pump ass-backwards, but he
found out from the FAA that it was hooked up correctly to pump into
the header and not suck gas out. I'm thinking the final report should
be out any day now, but nothing so far.