Scott - you are absolutely correct. Don't worry about whose business it is or isn't. We are all here to share and learn. Upon further inspection on the testing bench and after using fuel valves on nearly all of my planes without a failure, I have to say that this one failed in more ways than one. Worded another way, I should have listened to all the guys telling me about the potential for fuel valve failures.

I bypassed the melted fuel line and then discovered air still in the line. Yep, you guessed it, the fuel valve was leaking air as well. Maybe vibration in the cowling caused the seal to wear, or maybe I got some debris in it somehow, but it sure was leaking. I am going to change this out while doing the repair to the rudder and get all my fuel tubing well behind the carb. Whats interesting is that the engine was really running very well without any noticeable signs of an air leak in the valve. I would have thought that an air leak in the valve would have been more noticeable with the engine maybe running rough. It gave no warning at all. it just stopped running while in flight.

I was really lucky on this one. I bent the gear a bit, but this is easily fixed. The rudder appears to have taken the brunt end of the flip over. I was really surprised that the upper wing didn't have damage, but all appears to be OK,. The grass was fairly deep which cushioned the impact upon nosing over.

For me, this is kind of like the CA hinge topic in gassers. I had to learn the hard way on this one as well. That said, once learned I don't make the same mistake twice.