Valve Cover Problem
RotorWays
valve covers aren't made very well.
The area
where the gasket is sandwiched between the cover and the block at the
rear is marginal.
After
doing the valve adjustments one time we torqued the covers to 84
inch lbs like our book said to do and
we
damn near burned our ship down because of it.
Turns out
there is a typo in the manual
and we, like
many others, got to be survivors of it.
If you over torque the bolts like we did it spreads the already marginal fitting cover out amplifying the problem leading to the inevitable shearing of the gasket.
It took no more than 3 minutes for the gasket to shear and it looked like a full blown fire from the amount of smoke. We got the ship back on the ground and spent the latter part of the weekend cleaning up oil from everywhere in and on the ship. Anyway be sure to glue the gaskets in place and don't skip any points or they will bite you in the A**.
When you tighten these bolts you run them down until the flat washer just does touch the cover and quit.
NEXT! Step is:
Check them for leaks with a few run ups and a bit of hovering prior to replacing the panels just to make sure before you head off into forward flight.
The link below is a link to the video, 37,226K
If you look closely at this pic you can see that the part of the gasket that sheared off did it because it has no metal edge behind it. Rotorway didn't do a very good job machining these parts. Because of that fact if you over tork it even a small amount it will spread the cover and shear the gasket.