It is time to put an end to this speculation about vaporlocking in the Ercoupe. They do vaporlock and the cure is in the proper location of the fuel line from the carburetor to the firewall.
I have in front of me the book A Gift of Wings written in 1974 by Richard Bach. Page 231 begins an essay titled "Let's not practice" in which he relates the story of a woman who was one of his student pilots. She was a pleasure flyer with no ambitions for the military or airlines and he had some difficulty getting her to take practice seriously. Teaching her in an Ercoupe, he persuaded her to make three engine out landings which she performed without enthusiasm. Three weeks later she experienced an engine failure on take off where she performed a successful landing across the runway breaking the nose wheel strut, damaging the cowl and bending the firewall. "The engine had quit from a vaporlock in the fuel line, and when we rebuilt the airplane we changed the line so that it couldn't happen again." No date was given for the event but from his other writings, I have a sense that it happened during the 60s. My coupe had a vaporlocking problem until I fixed it and I am sure that others have had the problem also. It is caused by routing the line in the engine compartment so that there is a high spot between the carb and the firewall which can hold a bubble of vapor. The cure is to locate the line with a dip in it and perhaps to insulate it with firesleeve which is a good idea in any case. A boost pump is used in an airplane with an engine driven fuel pump to take care of the possibility that the main pump would loose prime when running a tank dry. The boost pump is located below the level of the tanks where gravity will keep it primed and allow it to keep the engine driven pump primed. There is no application for a boost pump in a coupe and there have been enough crashes caused by the use of the boost pump when it should be off in larger airplanes that should scare off any use of such a system in a Coupe. To my personal knowledge my Coupe has had a history of engine failures on take off, fortunately all above 1000' which allowed the engine to be restarted. Good luck, Bob Condon __________________________________________________________________________ ______ To unsubscribe from this list please send mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ___________________________________________________________ T O P I C A The Email You Want. http://www.topica.com/t/16 Newsletters, Tips and Discussions on Your Favorite Topics
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