Stephen R. Smith's Page

Would you pay this man to help you upgrade your airplane? We did and it worked out much better then the picture would suggest.

This blog is not a how-to. There have been plenty of well done how-to blogs. It’s just some pictures wit

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I will start this blog entry by revealing the ending. My Zodiac XL is happily flying again powered by its smooth-running powerful Jabiru 3300 engine. Saturday I flew 126 miles with the overhauled engine.

Now back to the beginning…

My Jabiru 3300 engine is serial number 1,256. It is about three years old and has 600 hours on it. Since it was manufactured several improvements have been introduced by Jabiru to address high oil temperatures in the cylinders. They are:

1) The oil cooler size has b… Continue

At 600 hours I am replacing all 6 pistons, cylinders and rod bearings. The heads are being overhauled.

My engine is almost 3 years old and has been flying for 26 months. It is serial number 33A 1256.

A few months ago I replaced a burned valve. Recently oil consumption has been going way up. Last Saturday the engine used 2 quarts in 5 hours. It was time to find out why.

When I did my annual a few months ago I performed a leak down compression check. All cylinders came in between 65 and 75 whic… Continue

Having flown my Zodiac XL about 600 hours with my Jabiru 3300 and Bing carburetor I must say it has had it good points and bad.

The short story is that initially the performance I got was quite poor. With some minor changes, performance improved to the point where it seemed acceptable. However problems remain which are perhaps serious.

Now the longer story...

First, in defense of Jabiru and the Bing I will say that the firewall forward kit I got with the engine did not properly address instal… Continue

Today I added 3.7 hours to the log book which brings the plane up to 600 hours. Today's flight was a lazy sightseeing flight with an average speed of 87 MPH.

I spent a little time seeing how low I could get my fuel burn and maintain altitude. Around 2.8 GPH is as low as I can get it without sliding out of the sky.

When I got home I upload my GPS track like I always do to review my flight. This one looks like I perhaps I had a bit too "much to drink" with all the S-turns. I find that 80 miles p… Continue