REFLECTOR: Franklin in SLC -- culprit identified

[wurzel parsons-keir]

Many thanks to everyone for all the suggestions!

Short story: Bad left magneto, though based on John D's
comment about starting on one mag regularly, I don't 
know why this made the engine so darn hard to start.

Long story:
Susan and I followed the air, fuel, spark through
each stage:
	Took off the filter screen (we have no air filter)
	Took off the air scoop so we could see straight into
		the carb
	Pumped the throttle, fuel dribbles out
	Watched fuel flow meter while using electric fuel 
		pump to prime
	Basically, air and fuel looked really good.
	Disconnected P-leads and verified that the switches
		correctly ground/unground the P lead.
	Measured resistance across the Mag with the P lead
		disconnected and got roughly 0 ohms -- 
		I believe this is normal since I'm measuring
		a few turns of the ignition coil, right?
	Pulled a couple of the plugs and the A&P who was there
		ran them on a tester and said they were fine.

Out of desperation we pulled it back out and tried starting
again, and after a bunch of cranking and pumping the 
throttle it finally started running.  I let it warm
up for a bit and then did a standard runup... sure 
enough, flipping the left mag switch had no effect
on the engine, and flipping the right mag switch 
made the engine stop.  

Dead left mag.  They are both supposed to be
impulse mags, so as I said above, I'm not sure why it
made it *that* hard to start.  We're going to pull it 
tonight and hopefully have a new one on tomorrow morning 
when we don't have to pay $50 to get the parts guy to 
come in.  :-)

I've had flight instructors who suggested doing a mag check
*after* every flight as well as before each flight, and it always
seemed gratuitous to me.  I guess now I'm a convert.  ;-)

Thanks again for all the suggestions -- it gave us an arsenal
of things to try when we got in today and also helped us 
make sure we hadn't left any obvious things untried before we 
went out and ground up the starter motor some more.  

							-wurzel



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