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Old 16th Jun 2004, 00:13
  #892 (permalink)  
Buitenzorg
 
Join Date: Mar 2002
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Beware when parked in falling or blowing snow

407 Driver,

At the risk of trying to teach Grandma to suck eggs, please ALWAYS fit your intake covers when you think snow might fall or blow. From your photos it looks like your 407 is fitted with a particle separator; this doesn't work when the engine isn't running (not enough airflow for the "swirl tubes" to properply work) so snow will go through the separator and settle in the plenum chamber, often as slush. This accumulated, packed snow may not get sucked through the engine until at high power settings, i.e. initial climb, when it will be sucked in as a "slug" of slushy snow. Even a shot glass of water when tossed into the intake will flame out an Allison.

A company I worked for had a bad accident exactly this way, as did another company on the field a year later. Afterwards, research revealed at least half a dozen crashes, most of them involving fatalities, with the same scenario. Somehow, this information had not been widely disseminated despite it being the subject of a study by I believe Bell.

As you probably guessed, the majority of those crashes occurred in Canada.
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