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[January 16, 2011]


I was at the airport today for the monthly EAA chapter meeting. Last night I dialed up my new GSM-AUTO box to turn on the heater. Sure enough when I got to my hangar, the engine was nice and toasty. It's great when things work! After the meeting I called up flight services and got a weather briefing. I didn't have time to check TFR's and winds at home before I went out, so I did this to double check all the TFR areas around me.

The engine started right up on the second blade. One of the quickest starts to date. Pretty impressive considering the beast hasn't breather fire in over a month, and the battery hasn't been on a charger. Everything looked good so I taxied out to the runup area. The runup was going normal when all the sudden the oil temp dropped to 59 degrees, then back to 110 degrees. It was good for a few seconds then went back down to 59 degrees. On the GRT system, 59 degrees indicates an open circuit to the oil temp sensor, so a wire must of come undone. I taxied back to my hangar and de-cowled the airplane to further investigate.


The EIS was also showing 59 degrees. Not a good sign.


I took apart the connector I had forward of the firewall to check to see if one of the wires broke off at the connector. I couldn't luck out here either. I also checked the connector to the EIS. The ground was good. I didn't know what output to get from the other wire to the EIS, so I didn't bother checking.


I measured the resistance of the wires going to the sensor. It indicated a open circuit. Crap, no fixing this today.


Here is my oil temp sensor, and you can see I went out of my way to support the wire going to it. This sensor was over 2 years old, so it wasn't under warranty with GRT. A new one costs me $25. Not too bad, but I'm kind of disappointed GRT didn't send me one for free. I understand official warranties, but I have only been flying this for less than 3 months! I will be sure to beef the hell out of the support for the wire when I get the new one later on in the week.

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