I flew back from Birmingham to Charlotte last night and picked up the plane this morning from Skytech, the Piper repair facility in Rock Hill, SC. After a quick 1 hour 20 minute flight, I am back in Savannah.
The plane is flying great. I got 12 all new “fine wire” spark plugs, whatever that means. (The engine is a six-cylinder, but airplanes have two spark plugs per cylinder for redundancy.) The engine had been running rough and the plugs were fouling easily when idling on the ground at full rich. Since I had been told to change out the plugs soon anyway, we hoped this higher quality plug might solve some of the problems, and it appears to have worked as the engine is running very nicely right now. I also replaced a few of the exhaust gas temperature sensors which were an old type, so that I am now using the recommended sensors on all cylinders. I hope this will solve some of the “gremlins” with the EGT readouts, and so far it is working well. A few other things were checked and fixed including a magneto inspection and adjusting the idle fuel mixture.
Skytech is a great facility and very knowledgeable about this plane and its required maintenance. I had discovered a few things in the engine log that should have been done earlier and these have all now been completed. Everything worked perfectly on the flight back to Georgia, and I will be returning to Skytech for my annual inspection due in November.
The flight back was uneventful. It was beautiful and fairly smooth, with scattered clouds, but no storms.