Engine odyssey

so I flew out last week to pick up the plane and the saga continues – the engine ran fine on the first flight (running it hard at low altitude for an hour) but the JPI 830 was reporting very high numbers (420-430 CHT on cylinder 3 and 4 – 1 and 2 were ok (my mechanic had previously run the plane on the ground for about 2 hours) on the second flight there was a small stumble on takeoff but a dose of boost did the job – still high temps on cylinders 3 and 4 -

Now the mechanic says that these JPI probes are not the best and are quite fragile ( cylinder 3 factory gauge was showing middle of the green when the JPI was telling me 430 F, and cylinder 4 egt was stuck around 1400 constantly irrespective of power settings)

So ok – I take off on a long flight across Germany(2 and half hours) – still at low altitude ~3500 feet and running the engine between 65 and 80% – I can see eventually that cylinder 3 actually breaks in I can see the temperature drop about 45F down to 370 (cylinder 1 and 2 were at 340), engine was running very smoothly though, so it seems that probe is ok – EGT on cylinder 4 is still stuck around 1400.

Land and fuel – half an hour later the engine starts up no trouble and idles no issue but if I try to run it up its vibrating all over the place and anything over 1700 RPM cylinder 4 EGT and CHT disappear like the cylinder is not firing at all, so I found a hanger and thankfully being france took a high speed train home(still took several hours longer than flying though)

My mechanic is gong to come out this week and look at it – good thing I am stubborn otherwise I would have given up a long time ago – once we clean up these teething issues up we will have the nicest little J going.

With the new governor and engine it is about 6 knots faster than the old engine – I think once we get it tuned in and running it will be a really nice ship.

I am thinking a blocked injector as well – not enough fuel getting to cylinder 4 – it will all get resolved this week.
Still have not been able to find a hangar in the Bordeaux area though, if I can’t find a hangar I am SOL

So as a follow up to the engine odyssey, I got the fuel servo replaced, and the engine is working like a clock.
The Nicr cylinders ran in very quickly – I added about half a quart after the first 3 hour flight and since then the oil consumption has fallen off to very little(less than half a quart in the last 23 hours), I changed the oil and filter after 10 hours and it was clean.
The cylinders are very well balanced, after the first 10 hours I started running LOP and its very easy with the balanced temperatures – as you can see in the picture below the egts are within 20 degrees of each other (high cht temp on cylinder 3 is normal because the probe is under the spark plug on that one – JPI says its normal to see a 50 degree difference)
So all in all I would recommend the Continental prime cylinders for Lycoming engines, as for the other components time will tell.
Still cannot find a hanger in the Bordeaux area so I am SOL.

PIcture upload is not working – I will edit the post later on when I can get it finished