ORIGINAL: Cyclic Hardover
This is not a personal shot here but whenever I see someone pointing a temp gauge at their engine, I make sure those around who are new stay very clear from these guys. There are no published specs and if there were, there are hundreds of scenarios to force varying temperatures.
I have seen countless overheated engines to include many of my own. This was brought on by bad tuning, lean runs due to airleaks and a half dozen other things. With this, they all had one thing in common, and overheated engine will lose power in flight after a couple minutes.
It may up and quit immediately or in most of what I saw, simplly lose power and if you lucky enough to land , the throttle will be full forward yet the engine is only near and idle speed. I have recently read here, MY ENGINE TOO HOT TO TOUCH!" Well yeh!!!!!! Engines get that way[sm=bananahead.gif].
I have seen absolutely no use for a temp gauge. If your worried about a hot engine, need to learn to tune it right.
This isn't a personal shot either, but I don't necessarily think "learn to tune your engine" is the correct answer all the time (although it is the root of most problems
). It is possible to have a perfectly tuned engine overheating because of poor airflow. I don't see anything wrong with measuring engine temp for this purpose. Don't get me wrong, you shouldn't use temp to tune your engine, but if the engine runs well without the cowl and you've eliminated all other possibilities, I don't see anything wrong with using engine temp to help identify a possible problem.
Dave