During the week I bought the new floats and a scale to weigh them on. The first thing I did was to weigh them – and I had no idea that I’d bought the world’s smallest scale. Though for $8 maybe I should have.
For some reason I was expecting them to be significantly below the magic 7g but as you can see they are not. But they are under 7g so we are good to go. Side by side with the old ones they are a little smaller and the brass centre that goes around the pin does not extend the whole way through.
We installed them in the float bowl and ran the fuel pump for a bit to fill it with fuel. Then we removed it carefully so as not to spill and and examined it: the bowl was full but not overfull, and the floats appeared to the naked eye to be at the same level.
So with a cursory check made, the bowl went back on and we started up the engine. Happy to say that for the first time in a while, the engine started with just the choke, started first time and sounded good. Up to 2000 and 2500 rpm and still no signs of trouble.
Pushed the plane outside the hangar to the tarmac and ran it for longer and up to 3600 rpms and throughout the range there were no vibrations and no fuel leaks. Back to idle for the switch off and it was still good.
Fingers crossed this is the issue fixed and I can go back to not flying it. No, seriously, I need to start flying off the hours. Some taxi tests next to give the engine a bigger workout, and to get me used to sitting in there, and then hopefully back in business.