16 General Aviation News — 800.426.8538 June 21, 2018Dispatch from Jose’s Bar and Grill on
Route 66: Iconic radio broadcaster Paul
Harvey was famous for his “The Rest of
the Story” reports, which dug deeper into
headline stories or found little known and
forgotten gems of modern history.
He liked to end the broadcast segments,
which reached 24 million people on
1,200 radio stations, with, “and now you
know...the rest of the story.”
Recently, people are asking me for the
rest of the story.
Oh, not for Paul Harvey’s story. Ev-
eryone knows he was an avid aviator,
a 50-year-plus member of the Aircraft
Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA),
a major fan of EAA AirVenture Oshkosh,
and early investor in Cirrus Aircraft.
The story everyone is asking me about
is the rest of my engine story.
Flashback
When we last left off on our tale back
in October, the engine rebuilder had
thrown in the towel and decided to switch
the project back to our original engine
case, rather than the identical case we
purchased to save time on the rebuild —
don’t get me started — and Race 53 once
again sat on the ground engineless.
And so she remained until shortly after
the final race of the 2017 Sport Air Racing
League (SARL) air racing season and the
crowning of the season champs, which
having no plane, I drove to.
But on a cold November morning on
the ramp in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a
week later, the third-try engine, bolted
onto the plane, was ready for testing.
To be honest, I didn’t have high hopes
for it, but as I looked on, Race 53’s lat-
est engine coughed to life. After a long
period at idle to warm up the oil and the
moving parts, we all crossed our fingers
and my chief mechanic pushed the throt-
tle forward. No oil burst forth.
After July, August, September, Octo-
ber, and half of November engineless, we
now had a working engine.
But my problems with Race 53 didn’t
end there. Oh, no. Not at all.If it’s not one damned thing,
it’s another...
My grandfather was fond of grumbling,
“If it’s not one damned thing, it’s anoth-
er.” How true.
My December was spent pitching, un-
pitching, and re-pitching our prop so it
would work with Engine Three, as we be-
gan to call it.
Engine Three was powerful enough
that we were redlining the tach at half
power with the prop in its original pitch.
A re-pitch to a more cruise-like prop gave
me a mind-numbing speed increase, but
not enough lifting oomph to get off our
high altitude mile-long runways without
hair-raising excitement.
The whole prop issue became an aero-
nautical Goldilocks and the Three Bears,
and each subsequent time I taxied up to
the prop shop they were less happy to see
me than the time before.
The prop ultimately optimally pitched
at last, I opened the hangar door in Janu-
ary to find Race 53 sitting in a puddle of
her own oil.
This wasn’t like the previous oil issue,
where oil blasted out of the breather vent
when the engine was running. This was a
resting oil leak.
After much trial and error, and manystrategically placed paper towels to figure
out where the Sam Heck the oil was leak-
ing from, it turned out to be a wonky oil
quick drain valve leaking.
That taken care of, in February the
header tank sprang a fuel leak. Into the
cockpit. Replacing the unfixable tank en-
tailed removing pretty much everything
in the cockpit to get the old tank out and
the new tank in.
That led to a March full of the type of
issues you’d expect when you disconnect
and reconnect things that have been con-
nected for seven decades.
We lost our com radios. Then we had
some (exciting) issues with the controls
sticking. Next the throttle stuck. At full
blast. And all the while the new digital
engine monitor was having teething prob-
lems, giving heart-stopping readings as
various sensors and connectors failed.
In April the exhaust came loose. While
in for repair for that issue, a worn sectionof engine mount was discovered and had
to be repaired.
Race 53 now has a reserved parking
place in the back of my mechanic’s han-
gar behind red velvet ropes, my Hobbs
meter is covered in dust, I’m rapidly ap-
proaching one full year of maintenance,
and now the plane is down for her annual.
I dream of someday flying again.But what caused the
original problems?
But that sad litany isn’t what you want
to know about. You want to know what
caused the massive vomiting of oil out of
the first two rebuild attempts, don’t you?
Yeah. Me, too.
The sad truth is that we never did figure
out what caused the problem. It was fixed
by abandoning the engine case involved
in the first two rebuilds, and switching to
another. Obviously, there was something
something wrong with the other case thatThe rest of the (engine) story
Plane Tales
William E Dubois
William E. Dubois is an aviation writer,
world speed record holder, and two-time
National Champion (second place) air
racer. He teaches Rusty Pilot seminars
for AOPA and remains optimistic that
eventually all his mechanical issues can
be fixed and he’ll enjoy flying again. In the
meantime he blogs his flying maintenance
adventures at http://www.PlaneTales.net
Air Racer William E. Dubois, left, and son Rio cross their fingers as the third engine is tested on Race 53. Pretty
much to everyone’s surprise, it worked. But it was far from the last of the problems the antique race plane would
have to overcome to get back in the game.Photo by Lisa BentsonPhoto by William E. Dubois
The Air Racer’s latest T-shirt.