Thanks Antonio will try those.
Terrible situation and very glad it worked out. As you say, you were very, very lucky. Good luck with the engine.
So, bit of an update. Getting a “new” (factory overhauled) engine through a shop in the US (with full support from Lycoming) who my partner in this adventure met in Oshkosh. Will be 6-8 weeks before we head back to St Johns (before flying it around for 20 hours at least). I’ll be taking a different route back home that is for sure…
I am in LA for board meetings at the moment and will come back commercial on Sunday. Thanks for all the advice here – it’s good to be able to count on this community for info… Flying is over until Mid September at least for me…
Thanks for sharing this whole story.. sobering but at the same time also quite instructive.
Glad to see that you managed to get some of your planned agenda done. Oskosh is probably the very place where to organise a replacement engine and maybe some favorable conditions so good that your partner managed to get there.
It would be interesting to know what caused the old engine to fail. Is anyone going to investigate this? I suppose Lycoming might also be interested to know what caused this.
This thread is a real ‘wake up’ call for those of us who are ‘relaxed’ about long overwater crossings in SEP. “The engine doesn’t know it’s over the sea” etc..
Thanks so much for posting this.
I once had the back axle seize without warning on a series one Land Rover. A tiny hole punched in the casing had allowed the oil to drain out. It turned out that when the vehicle was built in 1952 they had forgotten to tighten the bolts in the crown ring. They were all finger tight! In the intervening 60 years and 11,000 miles (Really! 11,000 miles in 60 years!) it had run perfectly, but on this day one of them had fallen out and punched through the casing. Sorry for thread drift.
That is why I think it would be highly interesting to post mortem that engine to figure out what has happened. Failures without warnings are those we all fear most.
Aveling wrote:
This thread is a real ‘wake up’ call for those of us who are ‘relaxed’ about long overwater crossings in SEP. “The engine doesn’t know it’s over the sea” etc..
Engines indeed do not know they are over the sea. Overwater sea crossings in a SEP are calculated risks, as are flying over dense forests and indeed any flying at all! Many, many SEPs have crossed the Atlantic without engine failures. I don’t see that this incident makes any difference either way.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
It would be interesting to know what caused the old engine to fail. Is anyone going to investigate this? I suppose Lycoming might also be interested to know what caused this.
I’m extremely keen to figure out what happened – am hoping to get pictures back from Lycoming (they are getting our old engine back). I will share of course.
LFHNflightstudent wrote:
I’m extremely keen to figure out what happened – am hoping to get pictures back from Lycoming (they are getting our old engine back). I will share of course.
I would make it abundantly clear to Lycoming that you want to know in detail what happened. I wonder whether this is not actually something which warrants a TSB investigation.
I’m extremely keen to figure out what happened – am hoping to get pictures back from Lycoming (they are getting our old engine back). I will share of course.
They did a report on our engine failure in 2013 and they only did care to point out that it was no warranty. My impression is that nobody cares. They sell new parts which is great and those things just fail once in a while.
