Hot Beaver?

[Lommer]

That's a great picture istp....
Thanks for posting it.

[Rowdy]

Any more recent shots of those beautiful gooses? The newish pasco scheme looks fantastic on them!

[Dog]

Yessir: http://www.avcanada.ca/albums/thumbnails.php?album=10

[jetsam]

We flew an Advance Wing Tech Beaver last year with a GTOW of 6000 lbs and that was a 30-20 cruise airplane.

it was on amphibs?

[iflyforpie]

Any more recent shots of those beautiful gooses? The newish pasco scheme looks fantastic on them!

Before logos were applied.

[iflyforpie]

If you where worried about nothing else but effieciency you would open the throttle, pull the prop lever back to min and lean the thing out untill it hardly ran. Your specific fuel burn would be great, but you engine wouldn't last very long (Read more about the Doolittle raiders).

This is what Charles Lindbergh (sp?) told the South Pacific P-38 squadrons to do for long-range overwater ops. They were using auto-lean and standard cruise settings--and all too often winding up in the drink. Lindbergh told them to pull the prop back as far as they could and manually lean the mixture. When confronted with complaints on what this would do to the engines, he stated; "These engines [Allison V-1710s] were built to military specifications; they can handle the extra abuse."

['79K20driver]

However, a known weak spot on the engine are the cylinder hold down studs; these are most often found pulled after someone over-boosts the engine (and a good thing to check during a DI). Break Mean Effective Pressure (BMEP) is the pressure inside the cylider during the power stroke. Though you might think the highest BMEPs occur at static TO power, higher values can happen at hard over-square cruise settings; or more commonly when someone ham-fists the power and the prop gov surges to keep up, or when someone is too quick on the prop lever coming back.

Good post, Dog.

Guys should be taking the time to check out the cylinder studs. Throw a plank across the floats and get out in front and have a peak especially if you are starting to see an increase in oil leaks running out the gap between the cowl and firewall. Obviously you won't be able to see all the studs/nuts but have a poke at the ones you can. By poke I mean touch them with your fingers. I remember finding a bunch of loose ones one day on an especially leaky beaver. I think is was seven nuts that I could move with my fingers all on the same cylinder! It was a high time engine. We tightened them up and it lasted to TBO but it could have been a lot worse. Another time, on my boss' engine, two studs where missing! The case was cracked around the stud holes. Good thing it was his Beaver and not mine! I wouldn't have heard the end of it!
Also, as you infer Dog, make your power changes slow and steady. These engines have 985 cubic inches spread out over only 9 cylinders. A chevy 350 is only 350 cubic inches spead over 8 cylinders, so you can imagine the size and weight of a 985 piston (imagine a 1340). These engines are made of big, heavy moving parts so it stands to reason that slow power changes are necessary for longer engine life. The same applies to any engine, really. The more you hammer it the less time it will last.
As far as power settings go, 28-18 was the most common, although a lot of guys ran 29-19 all the time. I used to change it up depending on weight. Usually I stuck with 28-18 when heavy and would go down to 26.5-1650. Sometimes I'd use 28-1650 if I was worried about the gas, but that never happens, does it?