- Joined
- Sep 14, 2018
- Messages
- 62
- Reaction score
- 7
Hi all,
I was out flying today with my 1945-J3, 65 hp Continental. Beautiful day, calm wind, flying straight and level, 2150 rpm, 75 MPH, I was about one hour into the flight, enjoying the ride. I looked at my tach and the needle was well past the red line! I pulled the throttle back immediately to 2150. I don't know the air speed at that instant, I never heard any change in the motor which may have been caused by my noise cancelling Bose headset or me generally not paying attention or both. The new throttle position to maintain 2150 rpm was about half throttle! I thought linkage problem, motor seemed to be running great like it always does. I didn't touch the throttle after I was able to sustain 2150 rpm. A real long 20 minutes later I was back in the vicinity of the airport. No changes during that duration. I set up on final, fully expecting to pull the throttle back to idle and the motor would be running at half throttle. If that happened I was going to make sure I made the threshold and then kill the mags. Thankfully that didn't occur. I landed and taxied without incident. After I got back to the hangar I looked at the linkage. all the way from the throttle handle in the cockpit to the control arm of the carburetor. Everything was tight and well safety wired and in short discovered nothing. I asked my dad what he thought and he was perplexed as me. He offered that it might have something to do with a sticky float in the carburetor. I had the carb checked and cleaned about 20 flight hours ago (2 months). I always leave my gas on, because I really don't like working the gas valve and linkage because it works hard and the carb doesn't leak. I returned to the hangar one morning and all of my gas had drained out on the floor! It was then that I took the carb in, had it checked out and cleaned and returned to me in serviceable condition. The carb guy said he could find nothing wrong. As I said above, that was 2 months and 20 trouble free flight hours. Starts on the first flip every time. I run 100LL exclusively. Any ideas? Please Please Please?
I was out flying today with my 1945-J3, 65 hp Continental. Beautiful day, calm wind, flying straight and level, 2150 rpm, 75 MPH, I was about one hour into the flight, enjoying the ride. I looked at my tach and the needle was well past the red line! I pulled the throttle back immediately to 2150. I don't know the air speed at that instant, I never heard any change in the motor which may have been caused by my noise cancelling Bose headset or me generally not paying attention or both. The new throttle position to maintain 2150 rpm was about half throttle! I thought linkage problem, motor seemed to be running great like it always does. I didn't touch the throttle after I was able to sustain 2150 rpm. A real long 20 minutes later I was back in the vicinity of the airport. No changes during that duration. I set up on final, fully expecting to pull the throttle back to idle and the motor would be running at half throttle. If that happened I was going to make sure I made the threshold and then kill the mags. Thankfully that didn't occur. I landed and taxied without incident. After I got back to the hangar I looked at the linkage. all the way from the throttle handle in the cockpit to the control arm of the carburetor. Everything was tight and well safety wired and in short discovered nothing. I asked my dad what he thought and he was perplexed as me. He offered that it might have something to do with a sticky float in the carburetor. I had the carb checked and cleaned about 20 flight hours ago (2 months). I always leave my gas on, because I really don't like working the gas valve and linkage because it works hard and the carb doesn't leak. I returned to the hangar one morning and all of my gas had drained out on the floor! It was then that I took the carb in, had it checked out and cleaned and returned to me in serviceable condition. The carb guy said he could find nothing wrong. As I said above, that was 2 months and 20 trouble free flight hours. Starts on the first flip every time. I run 100LL exclusively. Any ideas? Please Please Please?
