Had a rough day at the office today (pics)

[Movingviolation240]

Had a rough day at work today, my motor blew up about 15 seconds after takeoff just after I brought the gear up (because we just ran out of runway to land on in case of a problem). Murphy's law I guess. Just thought some of you would get a laugh out of that.



This is the number nine cylinder head, it's cast into the rest of the cylinder.... rather it was... This broke off clean the whole way around, there was about an inch gap between the head and the rest of the cylinder sleve. Note the size of my XL helment for scale.



Looking down into the number 9 cylinder. It broke off right where the combustion chamber starts. Took about everything off from the spark plug up. It also managed to dump about a gallon and a half of oil out the crack.



Me with the motor, as you can see this is a rather large engine, 1340 cubic inches to be exact. It gives some scale to the size of the part that fell off.

PaulOrlando, FL

[DAEDALUS]

Man, that's something. You had enough altitude to circle around and dead stick it I assume? Was it insured?

[Movingviolation240]

No, the crazy part is that didn't kill the motor. I nursed it up to about 600ft and brought it back around. It was running worse than a stock bottom end KA running 30psi on pump gas though. I was the most suprised by the amount of vibration, I had trouble just reading the insturments. Besides that it was down a lot of power, but it stayed together for me. I love Radial engines heh. It also goes a long way towards re-affirming my habit of saying a prayer every day on my way in that I will be safe and make good decisions.

"Fun Stuff"

[PalmerWMD]

So will your compoany be able to stay in business?

Fred...

PS: Glad your ok!

[Movingviolation240]

Yea, not that big of a deal, most of the parts came back with the airplane (somtimes when this happens the whole head will actually leave the AC, mine stayed with it) so we dont' have to buy all that stuff. It's like $2100 for a reman cylinder casting. Then about a day or two to put it all back together. We should be back up by the middle to end of next week. Till then I guess this means I might get some time off finally.

And just so there's no mis-understanding the plane is fine, it's sitting on it's wheels greasy side down in the hanger. It wasn't a really big deal, I didn't declare an emergency or anything, just asked to be 'number one to the runway' and to have the tower get everybody out of my way.

Paul

[j-z]

what company do you work for? youre lucky nothing more happened. i dont know if you remember me but i remember you. i was the kid who had the dark grey boosted 4th gen (with the for sale sign on it) lude at sports authority a loooong time ago. welp i finally got me a 240. just wanna say whats up man.

[AZhitman]

Good work Paul.

Like I've always said, the Lord looks out for fools and idiots, eh?

[nametakennow]

It's always great when you hear a big THWUMP.

Yeah, the driveshaft fell out in my case, but same idea.

[9095240SXDUCK]

what company do you work for? youre lucky nothing more happened. i dont know if you remember me but i remember you. i was the kid who had the dark grey boosted 4th gen (with the for sale sign on it) lude at sports authority a loooong time ago. welp i finally got me a 240. just wanna say whats up man.

LOL I work for sports authority in ATL. LOL Well I am about to Quit after working for them for a year!:ylsuper

[Movingviolation240]

My freind Rock pointed out somthing cool, the valves in the head are about the same size around as that water bottle.

[DAEDALUS]

Glad you weren't 200 ft above my house inverted when that happened!

[Mr1der]

you know, this is kinda neat to look at, not that the whole "plane blowing engine up while in flight is cool" but rather looking at the aftermath even thought is gonna cost you a couple grand to fix too. I guess it's kinda like looking at someone's grenaded block pics, only it's a bigger scale.

you didn't leave a stain in your pants or anything did you?:D I probably would've.

definitely a bar story right there!

[JESTER]

Dude, That sucks. Glad you got it down alright. I dont do heights, but I bet flying is a great job.

Did anyone hear how those F18 pilots were? Didn't catch it on the news....

[Movingviolation240]

These are from a R2800 (18 cylinder engine) that's laying around the hanger I work in.





That's a piston that sucked a valve, the hole is as deep as my thumb is long. Even with a hole the size of my fist in the piston it still ran.... I love Radial engines

Paul

[Onizuka]

It must be awsome working with old planes!