RV-8 and the 2026 Condition Inspection, The second Part

The beginning of the saga can be found here.

The big accomplishment for this second weekend in what will undoubtedly become a marathon condition inspection, saw me pass a huge milestone, but not make near as much progress as I would have liked.

She looks kinda sad sitting there like that.

The major accomplishment is that I got the propeller and governor dropped off at the shop for overhaul. I had been dreading this step because the shop is in Seattle, just north of Boeing Field, and I hate, and I mean HATE, driving down to Seattle. It is even worse now that there is so much construction going on. I had expected it to take at least an hour and a half and probably longer. It is all of 47 miles from the hangar.

I must have left at just the right time as it took me a few minutes less than an hour to get there. There were only a few spots where traffic came to a halt, for the most part, it was moving at near the speed limit. I say that I hit the right time because when I was headed back home about a half hour later, I noticed the south bound traffic was moving much slower than when I went through.

I am using A.C. Propeller Service as it was one of the two places recommended by Vertex Aviation at Arlington. The other was in Puyallup and that is an even farther drive. When I called A.C. they quoted a three-week lead time. I thought that sounded a little bit optimistic and when I dropped off the prop, I was told it would be 6-8 weeks. As my Dad mentioned, it is probably three weeks from when they start on it. I saw at least 6-10 other props in the incoming area ahead of mine.

After looking at my governor, they delivered even more good news. They don't do Woodward governors anymore. It is the only brand they don't do. I halfway expected this, but it still hit me kind of hard wondering what I would do now. I was quickly told, however, that the guy who used to do all of their governors left and opened up his own shop in Tukwilla and that he still does Woodward governors. They even offered to take it down there for me. Great, one headache I don't have to worry about.

On Saturday 3/28/26 I was hoping to at the very least get the governor adapter out, cleaned up and reinstalled, and clean the lead sludge out of the prop shaft. The getting it out part wasn't hard. The cleaning it part wasn't hard, just rather messy. The gear that is turned by the accessory drive train and that in turn turns the governor has a hollow shaft and that shaft was gooked (technical term) up with lead sludge. One of the downsides of using a leaded fuel. I was able to get that out, but it took some effort.

The business end of the adapter after cleaning.

Another facet of the adapter.

Putting the adapter back in, however, is where the plan fell apart. As it turns out, I bought the wrong gasket. Two of them in fact. As often happens with such things, when I went back to the Illustrated Parts Catalog (IPC), it was immediately apparent what part number I needed and I don't really know how I ended up with the part number I ordered. It is very close to what I needed, it is just lacking a couple of holes. Now I will have to wait until next weekend to reinstall it.

While I had the adapter out, I wanted to get some pictures of the inside of the accessory case, just for reference. That was harder than I had expected it to be. Just using the camera on my phone just showed the outside of the case and didn't really pick anything up on the inside.

Trying to use the camera on my phone didn't really get me what I wanted.

I pulled out my borescope and used that, but still didn't get as much as I wanted, there is less room n there than one might think.

At least the safety wire on that nut is still intact.

From here I took a minute to go back and finish a couple of things from last weekend. I safetied the plug for the finger screen, and also the drain plug for the oil sump.

With that engine mount tube right there, this is a bit of a booger to get to. The hose for the Christen Inverted Oil System doesn't help.

While I do have a method to ensure I don't forget something like this, I like to have photographic evidence that it was done in case I question it later. This way I don't have to take the bottom cowl off to check.

The plug is easy to forget, though I doubt it would come loose if I did forget.

With the oil change items caught up, I started on cleaning the sludge out of the prop bore. Being lead, it is soft, but it also sticks to the inside of the crank very well and has to be coaxed to come loose, often with a bit of force being needed to get it all out. The majority of it peels off in big chunks, put it takes a lot more effort to get the rest of it. This was last done in August of 2016, about a year and a half before I bought the airplane. It is amazing how much built up in that time.

I was able to get the front four inches or so cleaned out, but I don't have any good tools to get the stuff further in. I ordered some things that I think will help and hopefully can get the rest of it out next weekend.

Next week, more firewall forward.

Part three can be found here.