On any military airbase, the day begins with prerequisite amount of coffee, and then the flight-line crew and hanger duty personnel commence with the "FOD walkdown", shoulder-to-shoulder, walking the taxiway and ramps, picking up all the pop-tops and little bits of .032 safety wire. It's amazing how many stages of the compressor can get taken out by just a little-bitty piece of trash getting sucked into a turbine engine...!
(another exception for Jim M., the walkdown ritual is reserved for enlisted pukes, Jim probably has heard of it though, grin)
Yeah I'm lucky I'm with a gal who knows when to shut the SOB down! 25+ years of racing a POS Sprite has taught her to trust her instruments!!!
Thanks,
Glen
--Previous Message--
: Thanks for the explanation of FOD. I was
: feeling rather stupid for not knowing
: what it meant.
:
: I'm glad your GF has someone (you) who
: can delve into the problem and find the
: root cause.
:
: Doug L.
:
:
: --Previous Message--
: Over the last 40+ years of earning a
: living working on LBCs I've seen a lot
: of strange things, but here's one that
: stands out...
: The GF calls Wednesday afternoon, on
: her way back from Jacksonville, she's
: on the side of I-95, 100 miles north of
: here, with a pegged temp gauge in the
: Miata. She was running around 75, A/C
: quit, she observed water overtemp and
: shut down.
: OK, let it cool off a bit, coolant
: level, w/p belt, electric fans all OK.
: On my advice she ran it again for a
: mile or so, overtemp duplicated.
: After a $250 tow down here (not bad
: price actually), I figger it's got to
: be something to do with the thermostat.
: Hmmm...
: (picture below)
: That stainless steel pin *FOD that's
: wedged in there is completely binding
: the action up & preventing the
: 'stat from opening, even in boiling
: water!
: The source of the *FOD I suspect may be
: from the failure of a radiator cap, in
: a former life, ie the center pin. It
: must have migrated from the top header
: down the top hose and just hung-out
: down there in the T/stat housing, just
: waiting for the right time to strike...
: Fortunately as soon as the thing
: started to get hot, the A/C high-side
: overpressure switch kicked the
: compressor off and got her attention,
: and she's had enough stuff break on her
: racecar over the years so she shut down
: RFN...
:
: (* for everybody but Jim M.... FOD =
: foreign object damage, anything that's
: somewhere that it's not supposed to be,
: that ultimately screws something else
: up)
:
:
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