There I was after a flight in my Hi-max pulling and pulling on that recoil trying to get that bird to restart. After working up a sweat I put her away and will come back later.
The next day I pull her out and tie her down. I give a pull on the cord after priming and she fires right up. Hummm I must have flooded her. So off flying I go.
I land shut her down and get out. I pull on the cord and nothing again I work up a sweat and put the bird away. Now I know what the problem is. I put her in my dark hangar and pull the plugs, give a yank and nothing. I grap the plug wire and plug and give another pull on the recoil. Just as I thought no spark.
The next day I come out pull on the cord with the plug just laying there and, SNAP, SNAP. Time for the engine to come off, I have a bad stator. So off came the 447 and on the phone I am looking for a stator. I found a brand new stator for a price of almost 700 bucks. I order it, what else can one do, and wait.
The truck arrives and brings me my new stator. Boy am I happy. That stator gets installed and everything checked then buttoned back up. I reinstall the engine and tie the bird back down.
First pull she is purring like never before. The bird this is in has 24 hrs on engine and bird. I let her run for about 20 mins and shut her down. I get out pull on the cord and she fires right up. Man I am happy now. I let her run about 20 more mins and shut her back down. Again I pull on her and she fires right back up. Now I am wanting to jump for joy. I untie her and head out to taxi.
I taxi her for about 30 mins, running her at different speeds and even shutting her down, getting out and restarting, and she never ran better. I head to the thrush hold or hold short mark on the grass strip, its an imaginary mark but I head to it.
I turn into the wind, man I am excited, the engine sounds great, I throttle into her, we are picking up speed, I am justing getting ready to break gravity with mother earth and all went silent.
To say I was shocked is not saying enough. She stopped right in the middle of the runway. I get out and move her to the side. When I purchased this stator Rotax only offers the Dual ignition stator no more single, so this little 447 had a dual ignition stator, so I unpluged the coil and plugged her into the other side of the stator.
I gave a pull on the recoil and she fired right up, I taxied her to my hangar. There was no way that bird was going back into the air. I do not care how well it was running, I was not flying her.
I called rotax and was told that happens in one out of a thousand....I would be that One out of a thousand. I sold the bird and swore off two strokes that day.
This was engine out #4 out of 6 to date, that would be 6 in 3 years.
Tony
That part was Brand New
Moderator: drseti
Re: That part was Brand New
Interesting. So why, at least from one man's experience, has the Rotax 447 been so unreliable, while the Rotax 912 has proven to be extremely reliable?
- CharlieTango
- Posts: 1000
- Joined: Sat Jun 10, 2006 10:04 am
- Location: Mammoth Lakes, California
Re: That part was Brand New
2-stroke vs 4-strokedesignrs wrote:Interesting. So why, at least from one man's experience, has the Rotax 447 been so unreliable, while the Rotax 912 has proven to be extremely reliable?