We’ve had to have the Citabria engine rebuilt, and this after just 500 hours. Not fair. Expensive. Annoying.
The boys at New Garden found copper in the oil during the annual aircraft check, and suspected a pin keeping the piston aligned had worked loose. The cams had become worn too, not sure if for the same reason. And all of this after co-owner Steve and I both for some time have experienced increasing problems getting the thing started when it was hot. We planned to replace the magneto’s to hopefully cure that disconcerting trait. (yes, we know about vapour lock and fuel lines etc etc – wasn’t it). The new mags now sit on the rebuilt engine, and hopefully it will be a cure-all.

This beautiful and really-fun-to-drive airplane has come-in for some harsh words of late, from both Steve and I. But it will be good to get it back into the air. If all goes as we hope, with problems resolved and reliability restored, forgiveness will be in the air too.

(BTW – Citabria backwards; Airbatic)

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 26th, 2008 at 10:33 pm and is filed under Aviation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.