Self Maintenance / Repair
08-07-2014, 09:50 PM
#1
Thread Starter
Self Maintenance / Repair
Hi Guys,
If you really feel the need to take your turbine apart for what ever reason, I strongly advise, DON"T DO IT!!
I had a turbine in for it's 25hr service on 12/2013 and it had a bearing failure with about 3 hrs of run time after I sent it back. The customer didn't want to wait for me to come back from KY Jets, didn't want to send it to Taiwan for us to investigate why he had a failure, so he changed the bearings himself. Needless to say, it ran for a while but things didn't seem right with the turbine and then he had some electrical issues and fried the ECU and power circuit board.
I can say our customer is an Engineer and had a good idea of what he was doing. I could see that he indicated the Compressor wheel for alignment but I did not see an indicator mark on the turbine wheel. I'm sure a lot of the mechanics out here will swear that is good enough because they did the same thing and their turbine runs fine. KingTech, Dynamically Balances both the Compressor wheel and the Turbine wheel at the same time (that's a whole new debate I'm sure). When I sent the turbine to the customer after the interval service his Compressor wheel was balanced to 1.38MG @ 264* and the Turbine wheel was .69MG @ 267*. KingTech's tolerances are below 3MG on each plane.
I checked the balance, even though he indicated the wheels, his new balance was as follows: the Compressor wheel was 35.7MG @ 188* and the turbine wheel was 118MG @ 297*. Remember, he indicated the wheels and was pretty accurate on re assembling the rotor assembly based on the marks I saw. Those readings are extremely out of tolerance and actually caused the Compressor wheel retaining nut to loosen, I am assuming from the vibrations. If he didn't have the electrical failure and continued to run this turbine he would have had a major catastrophic failure. Could you imagine having a compressor wheel come off at 120,000 RPM?? I re balanced the turbine, changed the board and his turbine is running fine again but it is now out of warranty for life.
Bottom line is, it's your turbine to do what ever you want with it, but if you don't have a Dynamic Balancing machine and want to void your warranty, go ahead and take your turbine apart. Also, do your friends a favor and tell them they are standing next to a self repaired turbine and they might want to step back.
Regards,
Dirk
KingTech Service
If you really feel the need to take your turbine apart for what ever reason, I strongly advise, DON"T DO IT!!
I had a turbine in for it's 25hr service on 12/2013 and it had a bearing failure with about 3 hrs of run time after I sent it back. The customer didn't want to wait for me to come back from KY Jets, didn't want to send it to Taiwan for us to investigate why he had a failure, so he changed the bearings himself. Needless to say, it ran for a while but things didn't seem right with the turbine and then he had some electrical issues and fried the ECU and power circuit board.
I can say our customer is an Engineer and had a good idea of what he was doing. I could see that he indicated the Compressor wheel for alignment but I did not see an indicator mark on the turbine wheel. I'm sure a lot of the mechanics out here will swear that is good enough because they did the same thing and their turbine runs fine. KingTech, Dynamically Balances both the Compressor wheel and the Turbine wheel at the same time (that's a whole new debate I'm sure). When I sent the turbine to the customer after the interval service his Compressor wheel was balanced to 1.38MG @ 264* and the Turbine wheel was .69MG @ 267*. KingTech's tolerances are below 3MG on each plane.
I checked the balance, even though he indicated the wheels, his new balance was as follows: the Compressor wheel was 35.7MG @ 188* and the turbine wheel was 118MG @ 297*. Remember, he indicated the wheels and was pretty accurate on re assembling the rotor assembly based on the marks I saw. Those readings are extremely out of tolerance and actually caused the Compressor wheel retaining nut to loosen, I am assuming from the vibrations. If he didn't have the electrical failure and continued to run this turbine he would have had a major catastrophic failure. Could you imagine having a compressor wheel come off at 120,000 RPM?? I re balanced the turbine, changed the board and his turbine is running fine again but it is now out of warranty for life.
Bottom line is, it's your turbine to do what ever you want with it, but if you don't have a Dynamic Balancing machine and want to void your warranty, go ahead and take your turbine apart. Also, do your friends a favor and tell them they are standing next to a self repaired turbine and they might want to step back.
Regards,
Dirk
KingTech Service
