The slump

Any fan of baseball knows that even the best players can get into a bad slump.

It happens to airplane builders, too. Although I don’t consider myself a great builder, I’m generally pretty good at it what with over 4,000 hours of building experience and (almost) two airplanes to point to.

But late 2025 has put me into a deep losing streak and the solution is the same as the one those great players use:  come back tomorrow, put your work in, and grind it out.

I was so close this summer. After a few years of spending arguably too much time being a baseball usher, a Woodbury Forestry Department tree waterer, the janitor (and web editor) of EAA Chapter 54 in Lake Elmo, and professional grandfather, I turned attention to getting my RV-12iS project done, which had already consumed an estimated 1,100 hours over 8 years.

I had not yet started the 912iS, which I’d uncrated in June 2020, so in June 2025, I methodically worked through each item in the Van’s excellent Production Acceptance Procedures and the plane (now registered as N612EF) was acing everything until I got to the part where I needed to confirm the wing spar override, which prevents starting the engine if the giant pins holding the wings on aren’t in and secured. The slump begins.

The engine wouldn't crank. Much research and advice followed whereupon I saw the note I’d written in the KAI years ago where I’d broken, then recrimped the #12 pin on the HIC-B.  I took the canopy off, pulled the connector and pulled the #12 wire, and out it came. After fixing it, the engine cranked when it should have and didn't when it shouldn't have.

A day or so later I tried the first engine start. It turned but it did not fire. Since I smelled fuel, I assumed it was coming from the cylinders. I'd also put anti-seize on the spark plugs which I later learned you shouldn't on Rotax plugs.  I cleaned each up, ordered the heat transfer compound and put them back in for a quick test. It fired but I could not get above 800 RPM and as soon as I brought fuel pump #2 online, it died. Because of the heavy smell of fuel, I decided to discontinue.

I stood outside the plane scratching my head, when I realized my sneakers were getting wet. It wasn’t raining.  Fuel was pouring from the steps and upon much investigation and removal of upholstery, floors, and inspection panels, I determined it was probably coming from the fuel line/fittings in the forward tunnel, a view of which was blocked by the rudder pedals.

This is the worst possible place for a fuel leak because this is the worst possible design for an airplane. A narrow, mostly inaccessible tunnel with wires, fuel lines, heater and throttle cables, in which a view of the fitting is entirely blocked by rudder pedals and brake lines.

 

Blood was shed trying to get at things. Lots of blood. Murder scene blood.

 

The next day I removed the rudder pedals and Pete Howell and his friend, Bill, came over to Fleming Field (KSGS)  for a look. Using a scope, I got a good video of the bulkhead fitting believed to be the offender and it seemed like it was leaking but not enough to account for so much fuel pooling in the tunnel. Could the line itself be split? Unfortunately, it's impossible to remove this fuel line in an RV-12iS once it's in and we removed everything we could to get it disconnected at both ends with much blood shed and many expletives hurled at Rian Johson at Van's, who thought this was a good design. We never reached a conclusion although I did cup one end of the line and blew in the other and did not get the impression any air was escaping. More research followed.

I cancelled the remaining transition training flights I was undergoing (I was at least signed off by Matt Both after 9 years as an inactive pilot) and ordered a few tools that might make it easier (though not easy at all) to work at getting things reconnected, and also ordered the Del Seals from Aircraft Spruce which builders told me should help eliminate the leaks.

They didn’t. In fact, a new leak showed up at a bypass fitting where I’d disconnected the fuel line. There was a bad flare.  I can’t fly this thing. I won’t fly this thing!

I talked to my friend, Tony Kirk, former Van's support guru and likely to be the DAR should the plane get finished someday, and decided I wanted to replace the fuel line; I didn’t trust the integrity of what was there now.  It had to be done right no matter how much blood would continue to be shed, nor how much work needed to be undone.

To my knowledge, only one other builder had ever accomplished this task: Tony Kirk. Tony actually volunteered to fly from the Toledo area to do it for me. But with his guidance, I made a new fuel line and snaked it into the tunnel and flared the ends, then reconnected the lines.  I removed the fuel tank, capped the lines and pressure tested the entire fuel system.

This is something that should have been done on initial installation and if I’d done it, there’s a good chance the plane would be flying by now,  but there is no step in Van’s instructions to do so.  It should have been obvious to me; why wasn’t it?

Here’s why: Van’s once sent you a set of plans and a book with a narrative of what steps you were supposed to perform. As you made progress from subkit to subkit, that narrative got shorter, to the point where you were forced to study only the plans and see the big picture to determine what needed to be done next.

Now, Van’s puts each step on the plans so builders are merely following a stated step, then another, and another.  Builders don’t have to understand what they’re doing or what the big picture is. Van’s doesn’t even tell you the name of the part that would give you a hint what it’s for; everything is just a part number, So what should have been obvious literally was lost in “tunnel vision.”

At least the removal of the fuel tank gave me the opportunity to follow a service letter from Van’s to install an inspection port. Then I put everything back together, added fuel, and tried the engine again.

Again, it started but it was obviously ill, and I discovered later thay cylinders two and four were not firing. I now suspected the four injectors involved were clogged after sitting for five years, but I needed to prove that before taking apart an engine I still didn’t understand fully.

John Melchert, Rotax-trained investigator, was called in to try to see what secrets are inside the engine’s computer - the  ECU.  But he couldn’t get his “dongle” to connect to the maintenance connector to download the data.

It had taken almost three months to reassemble the plane, and I was back where I started. So I sent a message to Steve Wentworth asking him if he wanted an RV-12iS.

More RV’ers came forward.

SteinAir’s Josh Swenson contacted me and said he wanted to come evaluate the entire electrical system to rule that out. He’d built the harness.  He swapped two wires on the maintenance connector. Apparently, Van’s knows that after upgrading another component (which I’d done), these wires need to be swapped. But they never issued a service letter.

Lacking the cabling to tap into the ECU myself, more help arrived from people sensing I was ready to quit the team. Bob Mowry on the VAF Facebook Wing sent the ridiculously expensive (more than $2,000) “dongle” that builder Rob Carsey owns but circulates among builders (as he also does with a prop balancer). He also contacted Dr. John Russell of Missouri who knows the process of getting at the injectors, a valuable guide as Lockwood Aviation wasn’t returning my messages after an initial consultation. I no longer do business with Lockwood Aviation.

John also enlisted the help of Nate Holderbein, a regular on Doug Reeves’ Van’s Air Force. Nate is a savant at interpreting ECU data.

By now Nate had the ECU data.  He consulted with a friend at Motive Aero. “He's noticing the same thing as me, that there are a number of different error types and it doesn't seem to point at any single issue,” he told me. “He seems to suspect that it's a wiring issue, with an emphasis on grounds and connections at the fuse box. Along with the injector service you are working your way through, it would be worth taking a close look at the ground wires for both lanes at the fuse box and all grounds in general."

There was only one way to solve this. One item at a time, check to see its impact, and then move to the next item. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Mark Shanahan of EAA Chapter 54, who’d taken one of the light-sport courses recently, stopped in to help me identify parts and we carefully removed the entire fuel rail and all the injectors. Dr. Russell volunteered to drive up from Missouri to help. Instead, I took his suggestion and bought an injector pigtail from the auto parts store, wired it up to bench power, filled each injector with brake parts cleaner, then blew 35 psi of air into it as the pigtail was powered to spray out a fine mist. Then I put each injector – each with two, new $11 O-rings - back and carefully reassembled the fuel system.

A few days later I rolled it out for a quick start. The engine started!  The two cylinders were alive!

Did we solve the problem? Or did we just solve one of many problems?

The next day I did an engine run per the Van’s Production Acceptance Procedures and shipped the log file to Nate. While the data was more encouraging, he found that one of the two #4 injectors might still be a problem.

“Notice that the injector identified is showing zero mass for a short period of time then the graph jumps up and looks more like the others,” he wrote. ”That jump with the injector 4 lane B is probably when you cycled the lane and it came back.”

But Dr. Russell noticed something. The B injector on number 4 came alive when I increased the throttle to 5000 RPM. It’s possible whatever was making it cranky, was blown out.  Or maybe it was magic. Whatever was happening, the injector was online and staying up with its seven siblings.

But we still don’t know the answer to our question. Did we solve the problem?

As this was the first full engine start after the Rotax oil purge procedure, the lifters needed to be checked to be sure there was no air in the oil system. I asked Melchert to come back and do that. At the same time, he and Nate had different opinions over whether the fault indicating a faulty injector was from the earlier engine start or the latest one (I’d started the engine with John before checking the lifters).

Only clearing the ECU data, and another engine start would answer the question.

The lifters were fine but in the process of tightening the valve cover screw, John broke it, and he didn’t have a tool with him to remove it.

Then he had to go to Florida on a previously scheduled business trip.

I was later able to get the screw out, thanks to the advice of Dan Theis, Mike Graczyk, Al Kupferschidt, and Marlon Gunderson at EAA Chapter 54 who all suggested the screw wasn’t under any tension. They were right. 

With new screws and O-rings arriving from Advanced Powerplant Solutions (no more Lockwood for me!),  I buttoned everything up, put the bottom cowl on, reattached air and heater hoses and gave it another test, in anticipation of completing the engine work and moving on to weight & balance action.

It started beautifully and smoothly. At one point I ran it up to takeoff power and the plane jumped the wheel chocks. No matter. We taxiied to the end of the lane and back with the brakes making theiir usual RV noises (at some point, I'll get down there with some Disk Quiet).

Nate Holderbein confirmed the log file was clear of any fault indicators. The long slump, it seems, may be over.

Count the number of people mentioned in this column and you’ll have a good idea of the best part about building an RV.

 Come back tomorrow, put your work in, grind it out.

And have a lot of friends you make along the way.