Raptor Aircraft

mondtster said:
Journal bearing turbos are often a good early warning device for how bad the engine is messed up. They’re also a great source of metal that will find its way into every oil gallery and bearing when they fail. But, sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. Modern engines and turbos seem far more prone to sending metal everywhere when they fail than the old stuff was.
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Yep. I have blown up two turbos on my VAG Diesel and the "return to service" procedure from Volkswagen is to change the oil and filter, then run the engine for 30 minutes with the turbo removed and its oil line capped, then flush the oil and do it again (new oil and filter). Then they pull the sump pan and replace the oil pump! After putting it all together and running it again, the oil is free of the sparklies that came from the bearings grinding themselves to nothing...

Fortunately, the warranty covered both turbos and that same engine is running right now, 10,000 miles later with no problems and clean oil. That engine has a tune in it that increases boost, much like the MOTEC system on the Raptor.

The VAG engine does not use oil pressure for controlling injector like an older PowerStroke. It is a computer controlled high pressure common rail system.

His ECU shut the engine down before it ran completely out of oil pressure, so it probably suffered no damage at all.

On the internet, it doesn't matter if you know what you are talking about.
 
IK04 said:
[...] His ECU shut the engine down before it ran completely out of oil pressure, so it probably suffered no damage at all. [...]
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More than unlikely that the ECU shut it down.

This would actually be very dangerous as a small issue, like a defective pressure sensor could bring the entire aircraft down.

The original ECU would have entered ‘limp home’ mode, but still not entirely shut it down. I however believe that he has installed some aftermarket, programmable ECU (MOTEC?) which most likely tried to somehow keep the engine running for as long as possible.
 
IK04 said:
His ECU shut the engine down before it ran completely out of oil pressure, so it probably suffered no damage at all.

On the internet, it doesn't matter if you know what you are talking about.
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I agree, I suspect damage will be minimal if any.

At this point, I think people are going to say that whatever Peter does is wrong or stupid just because they want to hate him.
 
mondtster said:
I agree, I suspect damage will be minimal if any.

At this point, I think people are going to say that whatever Peter does is wrong or stupid just because they want to hate him.
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So, not installing the retaining clip for the seal was “right”? This casts his decision making in a rather dark light.
 
German guy said:
More than unlikely that the ECU shut it down.

This would actually be very dangerous as a small issue, like a defective pressure sensor could bring the entire aircraft down.

The original ECU would have entered ‘limp home’ mode, but still not entirely shut it down. I however believe that he has installed some aftermarket, programmable ECU (MOTEC?) which most likely tried to somehow keep the engine running for as long as possible.
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It's an aftermarket ECU but I doubt think anyone knows for sure if he actually has any shutdown alarm for low oil level or pressure. I also feel a shutdown would be dangerous but Peter may feel differently or may not have considered the potential failure of a sensor causing an unexpected shutdown.
 
Salty said:
So, not installing the retaining clip for the seal was “right”?
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I never said that, nor am I implying that I agree or disagree with anything he is doing.

My point is, regardless what Peter does with the engine the onlookers will say he is wrong. He could take the whole thing apart, find no damage, put it back together and still not satisfy people.
 
mondtster said:
I never said that, nor am I implying that I agree or disagree with anything he is doing.

My point is, regardless what Peter does with the engine the onlookers will say he is wrong. He could take the whole thing apart, find no damage, put it back together and still not satisfy people.
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The only people he has to satisfy are his customers, if he has any at this point I would be surprised.
 
pilotrick said:
The only people he has to satisfy are his customers, if he has any at this point I would be surprised.
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Perhaps the question is, who are his customers? I really haven't been paying attention to the youtube videos but creating content for youtube may be his real goal and customer base.
 
mondtster said:
Perhaps the question is, who are his customers? I really haven't been paying attention to the youtube videos but creating content for youtube may be his real goal and customer base.
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Good point! You are probably correct he is a content creator now. The only problem with this is who is going to be able to upload the video of his final flight. That will likely be the highest viewed video.
 
mondtster said:
Perhaps the question is, who are his customers? I really haven't been paying attention to the youtube videos but creating content for youtube may be his real goal and customer base.
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You've gotta have a lot more views and subscribers than he does to make real money. He's making beer money, not apartment rent money.
 
Everyone's talking about whether or not the engine "shut itself down". I'm not familiar with the redrive... can it backdrive the engine when the propeller windmills or is there a freewheel mechanism? If the former, whether or not the engine stopped providing fuel is moot- unless the prop fully stopped, the engine will still be turning.
 
Ah ok... previous posts talked about it windmilling. Thanks.
 
3393RP said:
Right after visible smoke streamed from the cowling. I'm surprised no one else has noticed it.
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There was smoke behind the aircraft and around the wheel wells as soon as he noticed the oil level indication. It's not easy to see it in the potatovision cameras...
 
IK04 said:
There was smoke behind the aircraft and around the wheel wells as soon as he noticed the oil level indication. It's not easy to see it in the potatovision cameras...
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Then I'll say it increased just before the stoppage, because there was noticeably more of it.
 
I may have missed it. Does the re-drive share oil with the engine?
 
So nobody is concerned about the wing? He smacked it pretty good.
 
^no, he's just going to make the other wing match it

Remember, we're not allowed to question him, we've never built a plane before and must acknowledge that PM has done away with all forms of conventional rational and logic. I mean, we were right about the engine quitting only a few hours in but that's just an abberation


...flies away
 
Racerx said:
So nobody is concerned about the wing? He smacked it pretty good.
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I haven't watched the video. But I would hazard a guess that the wing is fine. Velocity wings can take a lot of damage and they're just E-glass. Raptor wings are carbon fiber and appear to be very stout.
 
jsstevens said:
I may have missed it. Does the re-drive share oil with the engine?
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Re-drive has pressure oil feed and gravity drain, he recently substantially increased the bore of the drain tube after small oil leaks from drive.

I think that propeller pitch is also managed by same oil but I don't know the mechanism. I think it's a standard prop governor, he has talked about "the prop governor", but I don't know how they work in detail.
 
donjohnston said:
I haven't watched the video. But I would hazard a guess that the wing is fine. Velocity wings can take a lot of damage and they're just E-glass. Raptor wings are carbon fiber and appear to be very stout.
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I'd be interested in your thoughts.

Start at 11:00 in the vid

 
Looks like he only scraped the vortilon, a but that was a pretty decent impact. Doubt he hurt much, but a more than "cursory visual inspection" would be due if it were my plane. Lots of tap testing at minimum and NDI if i heard any dead spots. Just a starting point.
 
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"The seal would not go all the way in because it was 8 thousands of an inch too thick, so I left the retainer off."

Light tamping with a small hammer and off set flat punch should have seated it completely, and then the retainer could have been installed correctly.

He says the turbo's spun down because the oil coked and drug on the shaft, but they now turn freely, flush with solvent, and fine to go.

Unfortunately, I do not believe that coke is soluble. And reduced oil flow probably reduced cooling enough that the bearings tightened, stopping the turbo's. Mighty close flow tolerances if reducing the oil pressure causes failure.

Part and parcel with operating all the systems at the limits of their temperature tolerance.
 
It doesn’t matter where the oil came from or how much was lost. It was enough to shut down the engine and that is never a good thing. He must of had ZERO trust in his engine/reduction setup and that was the main reason for making racetracks in the sky within gliding distance to the runway. I was hoping to see him do some stall testing and establish/verify redline speeds so the customer would have some faith in what they are purchasing. Perhaps he’ll be back in the air soon and hire a pro test pilot to explore the flight envelop to establish performance parameters to prove his design goals. Otherwise, why would any sane person want to step forward and put down $100,000 for an unproven kitplane of dubious reliability ?
 
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