SonexBuilders.net

Hi, we have an early 3300 Hydraulic lifter engine. Sonex 742 is now ready for final setup. Currently near Jabiru - about to trailer it to Vic with engine out.
Air baffles and dedicated air to oil cooler done. Engine has been turned over with oil frequently but not ever started since purchase (possibly 10 years ago) Items for discussion

- air baffles - how much of the front cylinders should be covered ?

- send back to factory for new crank case through bolts ? we are not training - is this even necessary.

- can we modify the hydraulric lifters to work or should we convert it to solid lifters ?

- long time sitting around - all be it with oil running around on starter motor - what checks should be done ?

- how do we set this up for a long TBO engine ?

We are now wondering what the best mods are and would appreciate advice.

Hi Warren, you might not need to do any mods although I think the early hydraulic lifter engines had a few problems. Some service bulletins only apply to a certain range of engine numbers. You need to check through the various service bulletins http://jabiru.net.au/service/service-bulletins to see which ones apply to your engine. My understanding is that through bolt replacement is only required on engines used for training. If in doubt, phone Jabiru. I have always found them very approachable. My only useful advice is to monitor CHTs on all cylinders and watch them very carefully when ground running. It is really easy to overheat a new engine on the ground. Even a fastish taxi will make a big difference to cooling. Just thinking about it, I do have some more advice: follow Jabiru's advice on cooling outlet areas rather than Sonex's drawings. I have much bigger air outlets than Sonex recommend and have never had problems with overheating. I have read contrary advice to this of course, but that's the problem with advice.

Peter
Sonex 894, Jab 3300, 340 hours

Warren,
In addition to Peter's advise, I would post your question on the Jabiru / CAMit forum on Yahoo. Some very knowledgeable folks there and source for information getting all tuned after you get it installed and running.
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/JabCamit/info
There are several things you should be looking at on a Jabiru engine of that vintage. With the demise of CAMit which made the parts for Jabiru, may be a problem getting needed parts for solid lifter conversion. Serial number should tell you which camshaft is in there, very early ones did not work at all well with hydraulic lifters. Later, some push rods lacked oil relief grooves which is suspected of causing over pumping of lifters and failure of valves to fully close, etc. Top of my list for any engine stored that long would be to first check for internal corrosion even though you have turned it over periodically during storage. A good inexpensive video bore scope like the Via Vida 400 would be a good place to start. If not familiar with working on engines, sending it to Pete for the new through bolts, which requires splitting the case and thus opening it for complete inspection may not be a bad investment.

David A. Sonex TD, originally with Jabiru 3300 #1915, now CAMit 3300.

I agree with Peter, the people at Jabiru are really good to deal with.
I managed to squeeze in the Jab supplied Ram air duct and along with large air outlet ducts have never had CHT problems.

Phil, David & Peter,
Thank you for the replies - some good places to start. Camit being out of the picture has made this upgrade a bit more difficult, and am interested to see if we can mod the Hydraulic lifter system. At the end of the day - we don't want the engine quiting over the gully at the end of our strip :) cheers