ADDED FLEX JOINT – March 16, 2020
One of our exhaust pipes had been giving us trouble and cracked a second time after being repaired. The problem was that the turbo is being supported by the exhaust pipes, and as the engine shakes during start-up and when cold, the pipes holding the turbo are flexing until a weak point is found and a crack develops. The cracks were in the same location, so the solution was to add a flex joint at that point in the exhaust pipe.
Matt Cook of Meticulous Metal Works did a nice job on the welding and now we’ll see if this handles it. We have a five-hour endurance test of the prop transmission coming up as part of our test program, and that will be enough to know whether the problem is solved.
