CBarber

Bob Knuckles over at the Aeroelectric Connection (.com) has done a couple of write up on this issue. He does not slame internally regulated alternators for aviation, but does express it is a possitle failure mode and can trash other parts of your system IF it fails. IIRC, part of the reason is that you can not just shut it off without possible damage. I took my Mazda alternators to a local alternator shop and they disabled the interanal regulators so they will work with the pricey B&C regulators. All the best, Chris

Done. Y'all come up with the $$$'s for the rocket and I will provide the airframe . Course, a few extra $$$ will have to be included to make up for lack of range. Actually, I am already using a modern engine....the ROTARY!!!! All the best, Chris

Actually, I don't think Velo's ever came as seveal sub kits. Instead, it did come as two sub kits, the fusalage as on and the wings/canard as the other. As a matter of fact I believe I was delivered the last "split kit" option in 2002. I had my fusalage delivered on Sunday June 9, 2002 and the official announcment of the end of the split kit option as well as the SUV was on Monday, June 10. Mine was originally an SUV which has since been converted to an SE (the only real difference is the co-pilot gull wing doors...as well as the cut down keel and yokes. Now the yoke is a $1200 option. As to the sale, I have no idea if RRL is a good thing or not. I do not that Dwayne Swing has been wanting to sell for several years. It is my understanding upon talking to various factory folks over the entire time I have had my project is that he just wants to retire. I believe he is pushing 70 (if he has not already reached it, even though he was very vital last time I saw hinm in May of 06 at the Dallas Velocity Symposium. My regrets to you Dwayne if'n you are only in your 50's:( ) I do know that Velocity, Inc took great pride in not carrying any debt on the company. When they got slammed by huricanes a few years back they really did not want to go into debt to replace the damaged Service Center. The desire not to go into debt seemed to be a controling force in the company dogma. I hope that the purchase is a good thing, but I am not really holding my breath either way. I am glad I have my kit moving towards first flight...or so I hope. That being said, Velo, Inc has always been a first class company to work with. They were always patient and willing to hold my hand when I needed it held. I have not had to in quite a while partly due to them being there when needed in the beginning. I do think the comparison between the RV and the Velo is difficult to make as the build process and mission (up until the introduction of the RV-10 were very different). When I purchased my kit, it was 25k for a fast 4 person plane and RV did not offer a four place option. Now, the RV-10 is likely out of my price range (hell, my kit was out of my price range....but if I waited 'till i had the money, I would never do dang near anything....also, I have not kids or wife so I can afford some toys ). I do think that composite construction seems very forign to many and even if some may want to use it, aluminum seems safer and more known. FWIW. All the best, Chris

You caught on to that huh? The reality is I sleep much better without the pains of "self-unemployment" and the cash flow roller coaster of full time private practice. Plus being a cop is not only fun, it is often funny AND they let me drive fast and carry a Taser Now my lawyer fees pay for toys...like the Velo, my Honda Shadow Sabre, my classic 65 Mustang ragtop and dating a girl 14 years my junior........life could be worse All the best, Chris

Hmmmmm? I think I will keep developing my rotary conversion. Rockets are nice, but even really fast 15 minutes of fuel does not get you too far. It is kinda nice to see the jets on a fixed gear like I have. I have no desire to follow this course, but I do wonder what kind of mods they did to the airframe for the speeds they are making. Things to reduce flutter etc. I should prove interesting to observe their progress even though I think the idea is a bit optomistic. All the best, Chris

I have been running BioD in my Jetta since I bought it in 05. I have been to classes that taught us how to make it at home.....while VERY interesting, I already have enough hobbies.....like building my plane:cool2: BioDiesel IS DIESEL, but made from bio product instead of petroleum. It is rifined but in a very basic way...again, easily made at home from waste oil from you local greasy spoon. Or, IIRC, you may be able to get about 300 gallons from an acre of rapeseed oil, or about 3000 gallons from an acre of certain algies (It may be barrels, not gallans per acres???). It does have more solvant/cleaner factor to it than DinoDiesel and can acutally remove deposits that DinoD leaves behind after being used for years. As a result, if you start running it in a car that has used Dino for years, it is a good idea to carry around a fuel filter to replace in the field when the deposits flow off and clog the filter. Once it is cleaned out you should be fine and can use both Dino and Bio together with no problems. BioD and DinoD can be mixed in any proportion and BioD could be easily used with the current infrastructure. I am not any sort of enviromentalist liberal type, as a matter of fact I am a Liberatarian. I do not have any "agenda" for choosing to run BioDiesel other than it is a great way to "Flip the bird to OPEC one tank at a time" Even with the current raping of Diesel drivers at the pump with pricing 15-25% higher than gasoline (esp annoying since Diesel is a byproduct of gas. big demand across the pond is used as one of the excuses, uh, I mean reason for this), I am still getting around 100% better milage with my Jetta than I did with my Jaguar XJ. The Jag got about 21 mixed where as when I did my calcutations yesterday for the Jetta I got 44 mpg in mixed driving. In fairness, I must concede to get that kind of mpg I must drive at about 65 mph...when I zoom up to driving around 75 - 80 (yeah, the badge does sometimes ad to the lead foot syndrome) my mph drops to 35mpg. NOW, all that being said, are we having a canard or any Experimental aircraft that has actually found a solid diesel engine for aircraft use?????? Obviosuly I am a proponant of BioD as a fuel but have not really seen anything but speculation as to an appropriate engine in the 200 hp range. I believe they are usually too heavy. It is my understanding the rotary has had some success with diesels but I am not clued in to the details, however, I believe that Mistral is developing a rotary for use with JetA/Diesel. Finally, I read in the paper just last week, that a University in MN, IIRC, has just come up with BioGASOLINE (price and Exxon assasians, may be a short term issue of this technology:D ) FWIW. All the best, Chris

FINALLY;) , for now anyway is a final picture of the fuel injector port sealing kit. The last thing done for the day was to install the oil filler neck and the small vent tube. Thanks for looking at my rotary build. I hope it proved interesting for some. On to more tasks...... All the best, Chris

These pictures are of the open primary fuel injector port s into the rotor housing. I purchased a kit from Racing Beat to seal these ports. The kit was nice even though there are various was to close these off. Some use the ports, but as mentioned the Mistral Intake includes them in the intake.

Another shot of the completed block. A thanks to Russ. His pressance and piece of mind and skill gives great comfort and confidance to the process. The third pix is of the water pump parts The forth pix is of the ground down oil mount.

There you have it a rough overview of the build of a Mazda Wankle 2nd gen 13b rotary engine. It really is NOT very difficult and there is a certain elegance in the way it all works. I still have to put on variouls other parts, such as the water pump assembley....I have to close up the factory fuel injector ports since my Mistral intake has all the injectors on the intake. Also, I will show grinding down the oil filter mounting surface. We are using a remote oil filter and the origianal mounting surface has a very slight interfearance with the Mistral Intake. Since the Mistral engine (http://www.mistral-engines.com/index.htm) uses the 2nd gen turbo Mazda as a template for the development of its certified rotary, the parts fit nicely with this and a couple of other minor clearance issues. All can be easily solved with a bit of grinding. Stay tuned folks, that and other info to come.

More on the chain assembley then installing another important O-ring and a little gray RTV on the front housing before installing the front cover.

One of the componants of the front housing is a spacer which determins the amount of end play the engine has around the e-shaft. There are six different sizes. The difference between the sizes is hardly decernable by the human eye...well, my eyes anyway and my Lasik has been holding well so far. You must install all the front housing bearings and washers etc to be able to measure this end play. It really is critical to get it right. If after you install one spacer and it is not right, you must remove the assembly install one of the other spacers until you get it to the right tolerances to spec. You use a dail gage stuck on the end housing with a magnet to get the reading. I had five of the six spacers available from Mazdatrix. Russ and I were suprised that we picked the right spacer on the first attempt, even though it seems to be known that the "V" spacer is usually the right one, so we started with it. You may be able to see on the gage that it is reading at the second tick on the gage, or .0020, IIRC, which is where we want to be. Pineapple Racing has a good online video on this process as well as the Bruce Trurrantine rebuild DVD. Next the oil pump sprockets/chain and e-shaft sprockes go on as a unit. The lock washer in this application just gets bent on one side to secure the bolt on the oil punp sprockets.

Even though I thought I had everything together this is a shot of me looking for something. I must have found it since we were able to placing the bearings on the front of the engine. By the way, we have turned the engine around on the engine stand as the initial build is from front to back. We are now, however, working on the front of the engine.

The tension bolts are tightened up in a prescribed sequance in three steps. 10 lbs, 20 lbs and 28 foot lbs of torque. Russell did the first two passes and I got the honor of the final turns of the torque wrench to button up the interior of the rotary. We then moved to the front housing area wher there are some critical bearings (of course what isn't critical;) ) as well as the oil pump and gears for the "crank angle sensor"

The rear plate is on but you can still see into the engine through the rear stationary gear hole. The rear stationary gear is placed in position to close up the rotor housings. The last pix is of me applying silicone to the length of the engine tension threw bolts. The silicone is applied to dampen vibration. These bolts literally hold the sandwiched parts of the rotary togehter by running from the rear to the front of the engine. There are a total of 18 that keeps everthing secure. There have been a few issues/concerns that even with the slight vibration of the rotary, that these bolts MAY be at risk, so a "best practice" has developed to run a bead of silicone down the bolt to dampen vibration issues.

Placing the rear plate onto the rear housing.

More on the Apex seal and spring install. Then on to the next thing which in this case is installing the oil regulator valve to the rear plate.

The Apex springs are started in by hand and pushed the rest of the way in with an aul (sp?)

As shown, the apex seals get inserted before the rotor is placed on the intermediate housing. The two apex seal springs are inserted after the rear housing is placed over the rotor to hold in the rotor and seals. To install the springs you remove the "C" shaped end piece and its rubber insert. You then slide the small spring in...this is where we had some interferance so we super glued the smaller spring to the apex seal. The super glue will give way when the engine starts.....if it hasn't already when when spun the engine by hand. The larger spring is slid in behind the smaller spring. Both springs open area face AWAY from center...or towards the rotor housing. The glue trick worked great and the springs went in with no problem. The "C" seal is then placed back in place with the insert. These pix also show one of the four 0-rings that MUSt be inserted around dowlings that are inserted through the engine otherwise there will be oil leaks (at least that is my understanding.....so I figured we should go ahead and install them <g>)

Russell preparing the housing, another shot of the apex seal and small spring, the rear rotor placed on the IH and finally the rear rotor housing. Note the rubber band in the third picture holding the apex seals in place in the third picture. It is removed as you start to slide the rotor housing on since the housing is then in place to hold in the seals.

More and more. Since we are reusing the apex seals, we are having to secure the small apex spring to the apex seal with super glue. FINALLY super glue seems to come in a package that is re-usalbe. It came with a little brush. We also used super glue to secure the end of the two piece little triangle piece to make the apex seal one piece for install. The manual shows installing the small spring going in first with the larger sping sliding in behind it, however, that is probabley easily done with new seal, but when we tried the larger spring would get jammed up with the small spring. Glueing the smaller spring in place worked great. The larger spring went in easily sliding behind the small spring as it should. You may notice the apex seals are held in with a rubber band until it is installed and can be held in position with the rotor housing.

Even more pictures. Russell is cleaning before instal. On to the back rotor.

More for those who may care..... As with the other parts, we cleaned the intermediate plate with brake cleaner and compressed air, installed the O-rings and slid it in place. Intalling the intermediate housing is one of the few places you really need two people. It is nice in other places, but during the IH install you ust lift the ecentric shaft (e-shaft) up about one inch to allow the IH to tilt over the e-shaft lobe. It is straight forward. Just look how nice those new housings look <g>

Some more shots stepping through the process.

Russell and I were able to get back to the engine on Sunday (4-7-2008). I again tried to find Hylomar to no avail....screw it. I am confident in the factory advised method, especially after some research and now that I have actually assembled the dang thing:p . Since the engine set for a day and a half, I carefully lifted up the front housing so I could remove and re-apply silicone sealant to the "legs". It also gives a nice opportunity to see how the rotors sit on the front iron.