Insect nests in piston bores

carl

True Classic
I'm dealing with this on MIRA as I'm rebuilding a friend's spider motor that was locked due to an insect nest in #4 bore. This is the second motor I have seen this in, the other one was so messed up I had to throw the motor away. This appears to happen when a motor is stored without blocking the intake and exhaust, there is usually one valve open and the insects crawl in, make a home and whatever their biological baggage is really make a mess.

Just curious if anyone hear has experienced this.
 
yup, I found a wasp nest in a Triumph TR-3. I pulled the head before I rotated the motor, so no damage was done.
 
Could be worse, Carl. Several centuries ago I was on short final to the dinky runway at the little airport where I kept the Grumman Traveler I was flying at the time, when several wasps came out of the ventilation ducts on the instrument panel and started buzzing around my face. No fun at 200 feet above the ground, while trying to land on a 2100' sloped runway with trees at both ends.....
 
The good news is that inspection-grade endoscopes with surprisingly good resolution and a WiFi connection to your tablet or smart phone are available for less than $40 delivered. So now there's no excuse for not looking inside an engine as a very practical, non-destructive, non-invasive diagnostic and/or preventive maintenance procedure.
 
Could be worse, Carl. Several centuries ago I was on short final to the dinky runway at the little airport where I kept the Grumman Traveler I was flying at the time, when several wasps came out of the ventilation ducts on the instrument panel and started buzzing around my face. No fun at 200 feet above the ground, while trying to land on a 2100' sloped runway with trees at both ends.....

Carl,
What Dave forgot to tell you, is he was also running out of gas... :rolleyes:
 
I always figured that anyone who successfully knows how to fly would be on top of things....but my good buddy Dave wants to bust that concept!
 
Despite the pilot's license, I'm perfectly capable of being as stupid as anyone else, and I prove it frequently. That said, the airplane fender-bender was really not my fault, I was a careful pilot and meticulous with the maintenance, I just had a one-in-a-million event (simultaneous clogging of the fuel tank vent lines on BOTH wings). The NTSB accident investigator (who also flew a Grumman single) told me that had I been in a Piper or Cessna, I'd have died. The Grumman was a rugged little beast and flew great, very sporty - come to think of it, it really was the light aircraft equivalent of an X1/9.......
 
In case my post above was confusing, it had nothing to do with the wasp incident, but rather a more serious one in January 1993 when mosquitoes built cocoons inside the fuel tank vent lines running inside the wings of that same airplane, causing me to lose the engine at 1400' over a heavily-populated suburban area of Maryland. Having nowhere decent to land within gliding distance, I stuffed the plane into a street, totaling it and nearly totaling myself - but I lived to fly again and do more dumb things for Carl's entertainment.
 
The pilot will be serving drinks in the main cabin right after takeoff...please keep your seatbelts on even if you move about the cabin.
 
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