The second time I had reason not to fly an airplane with an engine problem that I felt unsure about was in Cape Town where I was giving type ratings to the owner and also a good friend of his Glen Dell who is now with the Red Bull air Racing Team.
We had previously been doing training in J/berg but due to the altitude we decided to go to Cape Town to finish the water work portion of the training as Cape Town is at sea level.
The problem first showed up one morning when I noticed the oil temperature started to climb and very soon went into the red zone which resulted in us returning to Cape Town airport.
After two weeks of trouble shooting which included not only changing the oil cooler and all the oil lines we even switched oil coolers from one side to another we decided to start the ferry flight to Oshkosh and hope the problem did not get worse...the temperatures were not high enough to have the over temp manifest itself and the owner wanted the airplane to get to Oshkosh if possible for the air show.
I told him I was almost certain that once I got in the higher temperature areas the problem would return.....I also put forward the possibility that the problem was related to a partially plugged oil galley in the engine caused by changing from mineral oil to detergent oil after 450 hours of running on mineral oil.
The engineers in Africa and the engine overhaul shop were doubtful about my diagnosis so I agreed to do my best to get it to Oshkosh.
All went well until we landed in Djibouti where the temperature was 45 c when we landed and the oil temp started to rise on the approach and landing. After a couple of days going through the usual problems associated with trying to get anything done in that part of Africa we finally taxied out for take off just as the sun was rising and the temperature was still low...for Djibouti, around 35 C.
I managed to finally get the airplane nursed up to nine thousand feet on the good engine and using the sick one at partial power to control the oil temperature where the air was cool enough to use cruise power and still have a safe oil temperature.
Our next fuel stop was Jeddah where the trip ended because we had to shut it down just after take off due to a run away oil temp problem.
Seven months and two trips back to Saudi Arabia due to running out of time on our visas we finally finished the engine change and ferried the airplane to England where it stayed for two years and was used flying for Miramax before I finally ferried it to Suffolk Virginia where it is now owned by this guy.
There is a good story on the history of that PBY in his web site for you keeners who like reading about airplanes.
Fighter Factory - WWII Aircraft Recovery and Restoration
By the way when the engine was opened and examined during the rebuild I had been right about the cause...there was a partially plugged oil galley leading into the nose gear reduction case that caused the oil temp to run away in hot weather.
Will relate the third engine I was reluctant to fly, which also turned into a real expensive problem for the company who owned the airplane when I get some more time to peck away on this keyboard.
