David / Eggert,

Thanks for your replies. I myself have never seen this kind of damage on a DZ and I've been running them since the Dingo appeared in 2002. So from what you say the mechanical damage appears to be the result of hydraulic locking or very significant backfire. I cannot say what has happened to the engine since I saw it six months ago, but the guy who bought it reckons it was like that when he tried it for the first time recently. Its hard to imagine the engine running normally in this condition. My problem is that I sold it to him in good faith, it having not run after November last year at the W/C in Argentina. I had many practise flights there in front of team members from Norway, Sweden, Ecuador, Brazil and Ireland and no one commented on it running badly, and I thought it was running well at the time; it had to due to the winds there.

Keith