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So the tail was removed and with the information in hand from Donny, we commenced to check out the liner's power plant. I didn't know at this time that Black Lightning had been hurt as badly as she was. I fully intended to make another run that day, possibly two, if we hurried. The tire crew was cleaning salt from the tires and checking tire pressure. I had Mike change out the high speed chute with the new one that we had in our spares. Just a quick comment on parachutes. I don't know if you have ever been around kite competition. When stationed in Japan years and years ago, while in the U.S. Navy, this sport was quite popular with the Japanese. They had several categories to compete in, I can't remember all, but one I do remember was the dancing kite class. Well, our high speed chute could have competed quite effectively. Let me tell you our chute, as reported by the five mile timer was a dancer whipping from side to side, then up and down. When Donny pulled the chute at a little over 200 mph. he felt it, at 350 mph it would have probably put him on his side. The next thing to check was the sticking throttle. There was no way the throttle could stick. It is cable operated and has no less than five springs to return the butterfly to it's idle position. What had happened here was that the 1/4 20 allen screw, which attaches the throttle arm on the butterfly to the female slot which is machined into the piece of aluminum on the end of the pull cable. had been left out. When I was playing with the pills, trying to iron out the blower problem, Mike had removed the screw, so I could better operate the hat's butterfly. It was never replaced. So when Donny gave it more throttle than it ever had been given before at the end of the run, the throttle butterfly arm found it's way out of the female slot and lodged itself in the wide open position. Lots of things happened and lots of things were found out by the throttle's wide open position with the liner being under load. It was noticed by Hartmut that the blower gauge was reading 35 pounds boost. The gauge has a tell-tail feature, which is a one way valve placed between the gauge and the blower manifold. It has a pressure relief button which when pushed, returns the gauge back to zero. Hartmut also noticed that the gauge was leaking down about one pound every five or so minutes. so he logically deduced that taking into account it takes about 25 minutes to get the liner back to the pits and it had been about 15 minutes before we took the reading on the gauge, that our blower pressure is about 43 pounds under load at full throttle. No wonder Donny felt a kick in the ass when the throttle stuck open. My calculations were all wrong when I made the decision to turn the blower 2 to 1. I figured the blower pressure would be around 25 pounds. The 4000 foot altitude at Bonneville corrected at times to as much as 7000 feet. The fuel nozzles were grossly under sized for that kind of pressure. If Donny had kept his foot in it for any length of time there would have been a serious melt down. The next thing that was found when the plugs were pulled, aluminum was found on number one cylinder plug. It didn't hole the piston, but she got hot enough to stick the exhaust valve in her guide and bend it. The next thing that was discovered was that the blower lobes were getting into each other. The reason for this is the extreme blower pressure. The Wiend 144 blower is not made for those kind of pressures. The pressure caused the lobes to flex upward from the pressure side and get into each other. So with all the aforementioned problems it was time to take Black Lightning back to the barn. It all sounds pretty hectic and disastrous, but it's not. It's just a matter of going back to the drawing board on the clutch and the blower ratio. Getting the blower overhauled by professionals with some racing clearances. Taking a good look at the transmission and finding out why it wants to pop out of gear when you let up on it. Fix the sticking guide problem and build a gear drive between the two engines. Put the whole package on a dyno and thoroughly test. This is by far less work than building a new streamliner. Liner number six is a keeper and a good 'un!
The End
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