Fuel Leak

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hdyerla
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Fuel Leak

Post by hdyerla »

Today I had the number 1 engine start leaking fuel. You could see it from the cowl and streaming out the back. We were leaking about 1 gallon every two minutes. Turns out the line coming out of the fuel pump was the cause. The engine only has 288 hours so had anyone else had this issue?
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Re: Fuel Leak

Post by mbitran »

Did you experience this on the ground, upon startup?
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hdyerla
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Re: Fuel Leak

Post by hdyerla »

This was inflight so we diverted and landed with about 5 gallons lost in about 12 minutes. We had to declare and emergency because with so much fuel coming out of the cowl we were afraid of a fire at landing or shutdown.
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Re: Fuel Leak

Post by CFIDave »

I've never heard of this happening on any Austro engine, but I'm not surprised by the volume of fuel you saw.

The engine-driven high-pressure fuel pump on top of the engine (which is recommended to be replaced every 600 hours) has to pressurize the common rail that feeds the 4 injectors to 1600 bar (23,200 psi)!!! To keep itself cool, the pump generates a flow of 4.5 liters of fuel per minute, most of which is not injected and is returned to the fuel tank.
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hdyerla
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Re: Fuel Leak

Post by hdyerla »

This was inflight so we diverted and landed with about 5 gallons lost in about 12 minutes. We had to declare and emergency because with so much fuel coming out of the cowl we were afraid of a fire at landing or shutdown.
I forget that when this happened we got both the R and L ECU lights on the number one engine and a quick sputter. After that everything was normal so as we went through the Checklist to see about the two ECU lights we started to smell fuel. This is when we noticed it streaming out the left engine. The ECU's detected something when this happened and both came on and stayed on. Could this be because of some loss of fuel pressure?
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Re: Fuel Leak

Post by CFIDave »

There's a fuel pressure sensor near the high pressure pump, so loss of pressure associated with the leak would have been detected by both ECUs to generate dual "ECU FAIL" messages. I once had this fuel pressure sensor fail in flight (no leak) on a new DA40NG (the engine kept running just fine). This not only generated dual ECU Fail messages, but also a FUEL PRES LO annunciation that made me turn back to the airport as a precaution. I'm surprised you didn't see this annunciation along with the ECU FAIL messages.

Upon observing that much fuel streaming out of the cowlings, I would have turned off the Engine Master (to feather the prop) and used the fuel shut-off, then landed single engine. I'm glad you got back successfully with no fire.

If you have any photos of the ruptured or disconnected fuel line, please post them. It would be useful to see where the leak occurred.
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hdyerla
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Re: Fuel Leak

Post by hdyerla »

We considered shutting it down, but with it streaming out I did not feel that the Jet fuel would light up. I was more concerned about when we shut it down on the landing.
Never got a low pressure fail light
I am new to this sight so I will place some pictures as soon as I figure this out. Thank you
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Re: Fuel Leak

Post by ememic99 »

hdyerla wrote: Wed Feb 24, 2021 4:13 pm We considered shutting it down, but with it streaming out I did not feel that the Jet fuel would light up. I was more concerned about when we shut it down on the landing.
With shutting down it early in the air you lower the possibility of fire after landing because the fuel would be vented out and the engine would be cooler.
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