About ten days later, the airplane was fixed again. The mechanic had gone back in, rechecked the valves, and discovered that neither the intake or the exhaust valves were getting a complete seal. He had reworked them, done several ground runs over thirty minutes long, and had seen no issues. To be absolutely sure they had a fix, they decided to test fly the airplane and contacted Scott, a Light Sport pilot and instructor who had worked for them in the past and whom I personally knew, to fly the flight. Once I was sure Scott would be covered by my insurance, I okayed the flight, contingent upon him calling me and making sure we set up good test conditions. He did, and I shared with him everything I knew and had seen. A day or so later, both he and the mechanic manned up the CT and flew for a one hour and twelve-minute flight, performing multiple climbs up to 7500 feet. They were convinced there were no issues, so they talked Scott into flying the CTSW to Houston if I would run him over to Covey Trails, a pretty little airpark northwest of Pearland and Sugarland and on the west side of Houston. I agreed. It was a small price to pay not to have to go through the hassle of getting the CTSW back from Denton. We scheduled the flight for Wednesday morning, July 19th. Scott hoped to launch about 7 am and get to Pearland about 9 in a two-hour flight. It was theoretically possible to do it if you cut straight through the Class B with either no headwinds or winds in your favor, but I was skeptical it would actually happen that fast.
Scott launched only a few minutes later than he had hoped to; at about eight a.m., I received a text with a picture of the instrument panel and a comment: “Ugh! It’ll be a little while….”. I could see his groundspeed was 103 knots, his estimated time of arrival was one hour and fifty-six minutes, he was cruising level at 5500 feet, and he was just clearing the south side of the Dallas Class B. He didn’t feel or see he had any issues. Another text a few minutes later showed about the engine gauges: 5200 RPM, CHT at 180 degrees F, Oil Temp at 200 degrees, and Oil Pressure at 50 psi. Those were all normal readings.
I texted him back saying: “Dude, this is LIGHT SPORT!”
A little before nine-thirty in the morning, I left my house and drove out to the airfield where I parked my car at my hangar and walked over to the FBO. Inside, a radio was feeding in traffic calls; I heard him call five miles west and request the active runway: someone else called they were using runway 14 and Scott latched on. Even though I’ve seen plenty of photos of what the CT looks like in flight, I am always curious to see it for myself, so I walked outside and watched him cross the field directly over my head. Banking left, he swung into the downwind and expertly flew the base and final legs, making a gentle landing on one four before turning off on taxiway Bravo and heading for the FBO. I took a couple of cell phone shots of him coming toward me as I looked for any traces of oil in case the repair had not gone as thought. As he spun the airplane around a few feet away, I saw that the bottom quarter of the whole left side was covered in oil. Apparently, the oil had been leaking for a while because it had saturated a piece of white “speed tape” used to cover a gap between the rear fuselage and the lower tail cone and its front end was flopping loose. After Scott shut the airplane down and was unstrapping, I stepped up to his window and said: “Dude, you’ve got oil all down the left side of the airplane!”
“WHAT….?!” He stammered, as he then climbed out. We both took out our cell phones and snapped pictures. Once I got evidence of oil saturating the fuselage, I looked in the oil door to see if I could see where oil was hitting the inner cowling (I could and tried to take a cell phone picture of it that didn’t turn out.) and then popped open the door to the left baggage compartment to find, much to my surprise, the compartment was coated with oil. I momentarily paniced as I realized that the canvas satchel containing the aircraft logs were there and its top had been left unzipped open, calming down as I examined it and saw that the oil hadn’t gotten in. There was a roll of “speed tape” in the compartment that wasn’t exactly in good shape, and I pulled it aside to dry it off and see if it was salvageable. I wiped down what oil I could off the side of the compartment and the oil that had run down the baggage compartment door and collected in a little pool on the bottom of a rim. I had a spare liter of oil in that compartment, so I pulled it out to use on the next step.
Returning to the cowling, I opened the oil door and checked the engine’s oil level on the oil dipstick. Scott grunted as we both saw the stick was completely dry. I added 200 ml and checked again. Still dry. 400 ml more. Still dry. The rest of the liter. That topped it off! I asked Scott where the oil level was when he took off; he answered it was in the middle of the cutout section of the stick, which defines the Min to Max quantity. He thought that meant he took off half a liter low; but a check of the difference between Min and max is .43 liters, so a spot in the middle would mean he took off only .22 liters low. That meant the airplane had shed .78 liters of oil, 26 % of its total oil capacity.
With the oil level temporarily topped off, I started my wounded airplane up and taxied her back to my hangar. Once we had her buttoned up, Scott and I piled into my 2014 Mustang convertible and headed for Covey Trails. Unfortunately, our twenty-minute flight turned into about a two hour road trip for Scott and a four hour road trip for me, though Covey trails was one of the prettiest airparks I had ever seen. Too bad I didn’t get to do a grass field landing there. (Caveat: To anyone who’s thinking about dropping in unannounced, better bring $100 cash with you. That’s their “landing fee” unless one of the residents at the place vouches for you.)
Round 4 Begins
The shop where I had the work done and I conversed fro about a week about how this was now going to get resolved. They first said were coming down on Friday, July 21 but then pushed back to Tuesday the 25th because they were “waiting for parts”. Since no one had been down to examine the airplane and do a preliminary failure analysis, I had questions about what parts they were bringing but didn’t get an answer. I hoped that meant they were bringing everything they needed to completely rebuild the head. While there was every reason to think that the third oil leak was associated with a root cause we hadn’t mitigated or hadn’t identified, there was no guarantee of it. It could be that the continued operation of the engine with a fault had triggered another failure mode. Additionally, while the shop had been stepping up to get me transportation most of the time and take care of the issue, I wasn’t feeling there was any sense of urgency about getting my aircraft back up in the air, especially after I got a note from the mechanic that he was going on vacation on the 27th and started mentioning August 7th as the next date for us to pursue anything. I hadn’t fussed at them much until I got that, but I did then and let them know I was going to pursue “alternative remedies” soon. I wasn’t kidding; I had selected an aviation attorney to go have a conversation with, though going down that road was the vehicle of last resort. I was also talking to a local Rotax certified mechanic to see if he could “get her done”, even if I had to pay him out of my pocket, assuming he would come to Pearland to work.
Thankfully, the business owner for the shop that had done the work stepped in. I got a call from the head mechanic apologizing for the inconvenience (not the first time he had done that) and telling me the owner was flying him and the mechanic down on Wednesday, July 26th to get the airplane up in the air. I was told that no matter what the problem was (and even if something else had gone awry), they would return the aircraft the service. That was a huge relief to me. I personally liked the mechanic and still had confidence in him (though I wasn’t convinced he didn’t have some blind spots—who doesn’t?), so I was happy to hear they appeared to be REALLY stepping up to the bar! It’s when things are going to hell in a handbasket you really see the character of a person or a company; and this one was looking like one I wanted to continue to do business with (though I would reserve final judgement until we actually got a resolution).
They came, they went, and the airplane leaked again…!!! (Part 4 follows)