Combustion chamber works, bearings not so much
February 21st, 2010 in Aircraft Etc, Projects.
Tested everything out today. The combustion chamber fired right up and self-sustained perfectly the first time without any tweaking. That was VERY encouraging, and more so that it worked great over a wide range of mixtures. Here it is running:
We set the the whole thing up on the frame and went to town, but unfortunately things didn’t take off. We did however manage to set the entire setup on fire a few times, so at least we’re doing something right. Further investigation showed that adding oil pressure to the bearings causes them to seize up, and therefore the compressor was hardly bringing any air in. This created a too-rich condition so the burn continued into the turbine housing and basically caused wide-scale havoc.The plan now is to either get a new turbo that works better, or tear this one apart and see if we can make the bearings work.