6 hours.
One of the day’s tasks was to replace the magneto gasket we tore with a new one. This necessitated removing the right magneto, the one that was cranky about timing. This is also the mag that has the hinky contact spring on one of the harness wires. I figured what the hell, I’ll make sure both are timed, so I’ll pull both, put new gaskets on both, and set the timing again. Big mistake. Timing mags with two people sucks, as you might have gathered from an earlier post. Doing it on your own sucks too, and then some. Yesterday it was hot and windy at OXR, so the hangar was warm and the doors were rattling and making freakish noises every couple of minutes.
There are various sources of knowledge as to how to time mags, but the general idea is that you turn the engine over until the crankshaft is at 25 degrees before top dead center. Then you zero the mag position by sticking a pin in the timing hole in the back of the magneto where it will sink into another timing hole on the gear inside, thus locking the thing into the position where the points are open. Then you stick the mags back on your timed engine.
A number of factors are at work here. There’s the impulse couplers, there’s the slop in the mags even with the timing pin inserted, there’s gear lash in the engine itself, and there’s the ambiguity of where 25 degrees BTDC actually is. Near as I could figure out, there’s a little lump in the rotation of the mag gearshaft where the points open. This is no great mystery. A cam inside opens and closes the points to make a spark. That fires the spark plugs. This is no different from your common Briggs and Stratton-powered suburban lawnmower.
But the magnetos are buried amongst wiring, hoses, and engine mount tubes, and getting them back on can be extremely frustrating. The mag gasket is a little wider than the magneto housing, so it’s really easy to dislodge it. The engine gears of the mags are also wet with engine oil, so they’re slippery. It’s also of primary, critical importance that nothing falls down the open mag hole into the accessory case. If that happens, game over. If that happens, you better hope whatever fell, like a nut or a washer, falls all the way through into the oil sump where it gets stuck to a magnetic plug — if you have one. The obstacles in the way make it easier, but not by much, to insert the timing pin into the housing with the mags more or less in place, but supporting them, spinning the gear, and inserting the pin is one of the more frustrating solo tasks there are. The trick is to get both mags installed so they’re within just a few degrees of each other, because there’s only about 70 degrees of twist available to bring them into line. If they’re too far off, they’ll never sync up.
The next part is relatively easy, assuming the first part goes OK. This is where the buzz box comes in. This thing has two lights on it, and you connect the leads to the P-lead connections on the mags. When the points are closed, the lights are on. When the points are open, the lights are off. Or vice versa. Can’t remember. The point is, the status of those lights is supposed to change when the engine turns through the specified timing mark on the flywheel. Both mags are supposed to change at the same time. There’s actually enough wiggle room with the timing pins in the magnetos to put the timing off by a whole gear tooth. If it’s off in opposite directions on each mag, there might not be enough range to bring them both back into line at the right point. But eventually, I got it. The trick is pulling the prop backwards a bit, then advancing to see the lights go. The prop has to be pulled backwards enough so that going forwards takes out the gear lash well before the points open, otherwise the adjustments are crap. But you don’t want to go so far back that you catch the impulse couplers again. Maybe this isn’t the proper way to do it, but this worked for me. Also of important note: pull the timing pin out of the magneto before cranking the engine around. If you don’t, best case is you’ll bend your timing pin like a wet noodle. Worst case is you damage the innards of the mag.
So I got them as close as I possibly could. Then I put the shielded ground wires back on. For safety, the shielded wires go back on the P-lead and ground before the distributor caps go on, because until they’re on and grounded, the mag is hot, and if a spark is triggered, it could swing the prop and really ruin your day, especially if you or your stuff is in the prop arc. Imagine that. The prop kicks and sends a blade into the tank of your air compressor or a nearby tool cart. Prop strike! Have fun tearing down that engine, sunshine.
By the time this process was over, I was already well past my scheduled time to head back to Los Angeles. But if you’ll remember, this exercise was only part of the day’s activities. The other things I needed to attend to were the RPM sensor and the oil temperature probe. Earlier in the week, Matt at MGL responded to my email and said I needed to remove the ballast jumper on the RDAC and that I could delete the resistor between 12v power and sensor signal. I pulled the ballast jumper, then proceeded to push the ship out into the wind for a quick test. Ron and Melody helped me push out and get pointed into the Santa Ana wind. With the wheels chocked, I fired it up, once again.
It lit right up, after Owen reminded me that I needed to run my boost pump for a second to get some fuel pressure on startup. It ran strong and smooth, and I had an RPM reading this time, but like a monkey, I forgot to test each mag individually. But here’s another ground run video:
This time, however, was another milestone. We pulled the chocks and I actually taxied down to the end of the hangar row, then back. At that point, my EGT’s were starting to get a little high, so I thought I’d quit while I was ahead. We pushed it back into the barn and I went home.
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