Ooooohhhhhh kkaaaayyyyyyy ... The third time's the charm, right?
Let's see, here ...
We had rough running problems, poked at ignition systems to eliminate branches and got to the wires and plugs level, and took a basic look at the carbs and found that they should be happy. We trimmed (and greased) wires and swapped boots and got her smooth again and thought that we were done, but after a lesson she was back to being unhappy. We finally figured out how to measure resistance and found our boots/wires/coils to look good. We checked for intake leaks and made sure the venturi slides were going up and down smoothly and, one at a time, shifted all plugs to the next spot.
We called Lockwood again and the shop acknowledged that there pretty much isn't anything we haven't tested or tried but also really wanted to lean toward the carbs, so we popped off the right carb and gave it a light cleaning (no replacements, but made sure everything was gunk-free and peeked through the jet). She actually sounded a little better, so we popped on the gauges and balanced them. While they wouldn't win any "after" awards, they were pretty good for "before" and didn't take much tweaking. We *also* were suddenly able to see that the vacuum on the left carb wanted to wander up and down, so heck yeah we popped that baby off to dig in.
Imagine my surprise as I was turning it about in my hand and heard a small rattle inside. It turns out that one of the four diaphragm screws had come out(!!!) and was banging around up there. Whoa! Yeah, that might explain the intermittent nature of things ... So we got it back into place and gave everything else a quick pass and then put her back together again, and after another balancing run (but this time solo and in the mostly-dark, so doubtless not quite up to our usual standards) she again sounded quite happy. Yay.
So then ... this morning I went to go for a test flight, and although runup was fine she just wouldn't make full power rolling down the runway and I aborted. Note my earlier reply acknowledging that we touched the prop; we're pretty sure it's essentially the same as it was, but there's a chance that it could be out enough to somehow destroy performance like that. I have to figure that this latest is a result of my monkeying with the innards, so the next job is to go back into the carbs and see what I screwed up while I had 'em apart :-)
We're pretty sure we had ignition problems since we were able to make the problem move and things got better as we touched and touched up every part, but clearly we also have fuel problems in the mix (see what I did there? ;-) Back at it again ... Stay tuned for our next episode!
D & L
