Talk about frustrating! [:'(]

I wanted to get my Rascal Forty ready to take to the flying field which I have not yet done. I have a brand new plane and a brand new field box. So I took it out in my backyard and finished hooking up the fuel can and fuel pump in my field box. I set my plane into the foam rubber covered cradle and went to use my new Slimline Super Fueler. First thing is the pump is running backwards so it pressurises the can and squirts raw fuel all over the place. Argh... So I clean up the mess and get it going the correct way and fill up the tank in the plane. This is where it goes down hill...

I had expected all my nice work to be just perfect, lol! Well the engine won't light off. I had run in in a test stand but now the needles were off. And I kept fiddling with them and no go. I wan't even sure about it getting fuel so I bypassed the fueler system and plumbed it direct. Still would not light off. I was using my on-board glow igniter and now I was distrusting that the battery was any good so I used a hand held glow igniter and plugged the muffler to make sure it was getting fuel. Oh yeah! It spits fuel out the exhaust pipe now but still won't start and run. It did pop a couple times and even attempted to idle for about five seconds. In the meantime I am cranking and cranking like a madman and as it turned out the foam rubber covers in the cradle were WAY too soft and allowed the cradle to dig into the soft balsawood! So now my brand new plane has severe hangar rash on the top of the cowl and on the port side.

I finally gave up. I just cleaned everything up and took it all back inside. I then removed the engine from the plane (PITA!!) and set it up on my test stand. Installed a new c-cell in my glow igniter, turned the needles to 3 turns out each and bumped it with the starter. It immediately started and idled! Argh!! [:@] Typical!!

Well, truth be told I did find a problem. The o-ring for the high speed needle was trashed and it was leaking fuel bad when pressurised with tank pressure so at least I found something! The engine is perfectly dialed in now and I can install it and sort out if there are actually problems with my fuel delivery system or not. In the meantime my airplane is permanently scarred from those cradles.