- Joined
- Feb 7, 2019
- Messages
- 406
- Reaction score
- 74
I flew for about an hour just before Thanksgiving, then parked the plane & didn’t come back to it until a couple of days ago. I immediately noticed a large stain on the concrete below the gascolator check valve. Looking closer, I could see where the stain had continued down the belly of the plane toward the tail. Called my mechanic, & discovered that the gascolator was leaking fuel from around the gasket at the top where the bowl & top meet. Checking my fuel tanks I realized I had lost quite a bit of fuel out of the right tank. Apparently the cowling was positioned so that the opening for the check valve wasn’t centered, & the cowling was actually pushing on the check valve to the point that it was breaking the seal where the bowl meets the top. Even after moving the cowling & readjusting the gascolator mounting tension, it was still incredibly easy to to break the gasket seal at the top just by applying a little bit of sideways pressure to the bottom of the fuel bowl. Not a good design.
