Today I had a Arlington Fly In managers meeting up at Arlington (KAWO). The weather was passable, so I decided to fly up in the Wolf Pitts.
The flight up was fairly non-eventful. A few low clouds and some rain to dodge around, but nothing out of the ordinary for Winter in the Pacific Northwest.
However, attempting to leave KAWO is where it got interesting. After stopping in to say good-bye to a FBO that is closing, I strapped into the Wolf Pitts for the long taxi to 16.
About halfway I started smelling avgas pretty strong, upon looking down I saw it streaming down the belly through the lexan floor. Crap! Ok, that's the exhaust right there by the leaking fuel, a backfire could ruin my whole day... I pointed the airplane at an open area of pavement, kept some forward momentum, unstrapped the belts, opened the canopy and shut off the engine coasting to a stop.
After inspecting the area, I couldn't quite figure out what was wrong. With a non-vented fuel cap (for aerobatics) the Wolf Pitts tends to spit out fuel when the tank is full (like now) and the outside temp rises. So I tried firing it up again to see if that could be the case. Nope, lots of fuel. I shut her down again.
Left messages for a couple of A&P's I know at KAWO and started to pull the cowl off.
Jim from Aircore called me back and was more than willing to come over and tow my plane back to his shop.
After pulling the cowl, I was getting ready to fire it up and as I pressurized the fuel system Jim saw fuel leaking near the top of the firewall, from the fuel line connecting the pressure gauge to the fuel pump. We pulled the hose off, connecting it to a compressor resulted in revealing a lot of leaks.
The rubber hose under the steel braiding had deteriorated completely.
Gotta love aircraft ownership...
No comments:
Post a Comment