Anderson Ed wrote:

Hi Brian,
        Thanks for the suggestion on how to get the flywheel nut off.
Typically, I do not have a helper, so went out and got the 2 1/8" socket
and the torque wench zipped it off.

What does the wench look like Ed? Is she "built"? too bad she does not
"help". :-)

 Actually the counterweight was
tougher to get off, I had a puller but no metric bolts so I tried a
suggestion about hitting the counter weight with a dead blow hammer near
the eccentric shaft.  But after a number of unsuccessful tries, I went
out and got two metric bolts that would tread into the counterweight
holes and with a few turns off popped the counter weight.  Things went
quickly after that.

I did notice on the flywheel nut some teeth marks as if the rear end of
the teeth (splines)of the PSRU drive shaft had been hitting the nut.
This correlates (I believe) with the hypothesis of Tracy Crook that the
"clanking" sound of the PSRU at low rpm is caused by the prop unloading
betweed power impulses and loading again causing the shaft to move back
and forth.  I suspect when the prop unloads and the shaft moves back
toward the flywheel the rear edge of the splines on the shaft hit the
nut.  The corrective action taken by Tracy and myself and others is to
set the idle rpm high enough to preclude the prop unloading between
power impulses.  It would appear that perhaps a brass or soft iron ring
on the drive shaft between the rear of the splines and the nut could
prevent this - but, just conjecture on my part.

The tear down went easily but I had never counted the number of parts on
a rotor (66 pieces!) so was glad I had a Mazda Rotor parts box to keep
all the pieces together and segrated.

So now all we have to do is put it back together correctly {:>}.

Ed Anderson

The Aircraft Rotary Engine Newsletter.              Powered by Linux.

http://home.earthlink.net/~rotaryeng/            http://www.linux.org