Daihatsu Hi-Jet Pickup Truck Page DOOM
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Today I had a test run up to check
out the new aircraft starting battery. At around 60-70%
RPM, there was a loud whoop type noise, the engine
flamed
out and was it at standstill within 10 seconds! The HP
Cock was swiftly placed to the off position and I
was left with wobbly knees and slightly tearful, also
clueless as to what had just happened. After I gathered
myself
together and had a quick inspection, it became obvious
that the engine had been FODDED with a fairly large
piece of yellow cloth. Don't know where it came from,
but there you go, it was there. The engine was extremely
stiff to turn, impossible by hand
and
at
this point
I was
convinced that the engine was a right off. I quickly
took the viper back to the workshop, where an intelligent
guess was that the
last 4 stages and had effectively centrifuged the material
outwards on to the outer compressor blade tips where
they acted as friction
between the outer tips and the compressor
case. I administered a large quantity of WD40 in the
hope
that this would free it up and also by turning it over
on the starter would expel the cloth, a bit of wishfull
thinking unfortunately and the starter may have been
damaged during this procedure, time will tell. Then
after a conversation with Martin Hill of Fireforce
fame, it was decided that the only option would be
to remove the compressor case and remove the foreign
material by hand. Pictured below is what we found.
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A sneaky view of
inside the compressor case, cloth is already visable
on the compressor blades.
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The stator blades
have virtually no large debris on them, this is a relief,
but is also kind of expected, more importantly there
is no obvious damage.
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You may notice that there is a film
of cloth residue, on the stators, this comes off easily.
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The scary bit, obvious cloth ingestion
as expected on the outer blade tips.
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Using tweezers and a vacuum cleaner
we carefully removed all vi sable cloth fragments, as
you
can see the
combustion
chamber guide vanes have caught a fair quantity of material. |
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So far there seems to be no damage
to the rotor assembly, the top case will be replaced and
the lower compressor segment will be removed and checked. |
The engine has now been put back together and has
had numerous runs including a 60 second 100% run.
There is a noise that is noticeable coming from the
engine at about 2-6 seconds before the engines stops
once shut down, but this may well have been there
before (I Hope), so I am going on the presumption that
all is ok.
PHEW for now!!!
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