Keep getting random engine shut off/fire/ crash bar going down during cruise?

[Leviathan]

Hi, 

First off, assuming Goran reads this - after flying the SAAB 340A and now this, you (along with the ini A300 guys) are my favourite plane developer. Both this TBM 900 and the LES Saab are truly great, and worth every cent.

One issue I'm having that I can't seem to pin down is that 3 or so hours into a flight, the TBM basically just turns off and the crash bar is down - the 2nd time this happened it was also accompanied with an engine fire. It's possible there was also a fire the first time, but I didn't notice it. I have no reason to think that in either case was I above 100 torque, above 104% NG, etc., essentially I was not as far as I know above the red in any of the Main Panel parameters, and indeed in both cases I'd been in cruise AP for hours. Am I bumping something on my KB, or my throttle quadrant, possibly? I've looked at some other posts here and elsewhere, but my issue is in cruise, not on the ground during startup. Also the crash bar being 'Down' each time is weird - unless it does that automatically during certain situations. I did check all my keybindings, or tried to, and couldn't find a single keybinding relating to the TBM900 within the XP11 keybindings setting. So uh, any ideas?

And thanks again for the plane.  

[Leviathan]

OH - I should also add that the combustor and the turbines were ruined or whatever, if this helps narrow down what I'm doing.

Edited April 16, 2022 by Leviathan

[Leviathan]

Also one more thing - where is my Throttle friction adjustment knob? I thought it was supposed to be on the left side of the pedestal?

[Pils]

On the right. It’s just a documentation error.

[Leviathan]

Gotcha - I saw that but when I clicked nothing 'seemed' to be happening - but perhaps I have to be airborne for it to work. Appreciate the help, and if you have any clues about my engine cruise issues I'd be indebted to you, friend.

[Leviathan]

Just did it again, same circumstances as before. I was specifically watching the engine this time and all parameters were well within green - I was cruising 25k with less than 60 torque and abLog.txtout 45 GPH fuel burn - definitely not over taxing the engines. I attach my log.

[Leviathan]

Back on the ground and checking and I've got a flooded combustor and a borken turbine.

[Leviathan]

I also (before this flight) created a new controls profile that started with every single button/action disabled, because I noticed that many problems seem to be caused by errant control mappings. Not only that, but I was not touching my keyboard/controls at all when it shut off this time. 

[Leviathan]

2022-04-17 15:43:22 TBM900[fail.c:932]: Component turbines has failed due to excessive wear (worn: 100.000000%, slope 0.5). You can prevent this by observing performance limitations and servicing the aircraft regularly in the maintenance hangar.
2022-04-17 15:43:22 TBM900[fail.c:935]: Failure impact: sim/operation/failures/rel_hunsta0
2022-04-17 15:43:24 TBM900[fail.c:932]: Component combustion liner has failed due to excessive wear (worn: 100.000000%, slope 1.0). You can prevent this by observing performance limitations and servicing the aircraft regularly in the maintenance hangar.
2022-04-17 15:43:24 TBM900[fail.c:935]: Failure impact: sim/operation/failures/rel_hotsta0
2022-04-17 15:43:24 TBM900[fail.c:935]: Failure impact: sim/operation/failures/rel_runITT0
2022-04-17 15:43:31 TBM900[fail.c:932]: Component combustion liner has failed due to excessive wear (worn: 100.000000%, slope 0.2). You can prevent this by observing performance limitations and servicing the aircraft regularly in the maintenance hangar.
2022-04-17 15:43:31 TBM900[fail.c:935]: Failure impact: sim/operation/failures/rel_engfla0
 

I'm getting this every single flight at cruise on brand new airframes at cruise level with TRQ less than 90%, prop RPM at 2k, NG at 97%, ITT in the mid 700s, and oil pressure and oil temp in green. I have the inertial sep on at takeoff, and I turn it off at about 5k feet. I can recreate this engine issue by not even taking off and just going to the map and putting the airplane at 25k feet and 150 knots, so it isn't like this is a bird strike or something. It happens in clear weather with no clouds or icing. Accelerated wear is not turned on and never has been. It does this on new installs of the airplane.

??

[Leviathan]

Component turbines has failed due to excessive wear (worn: 100.000000%, slope 0.5). You can prevent this by observing performance limitations and servicing the aircraft regularly in the maintenance hangar.
2022-04-17 17:47:58 TBM900[fail.c:935]: Failure impact: sim/operation/failures/rel_hunsta0
2022-04-17 17:47:59 TBM900[fail.c:932]: Component combustion liner has failed due to excessive wear (worn: 100.000000%, slope 1.0). You can prevent this by observing performance limitations and servicing the aircraft regularly in the maintenance hangar.
2022-04-17 17:47:59 TBM900[fail.c:935]: Failure impact: sim/operation/failures/rel_hotsta0
2022-04-17 17:47:59 TBM900[fail.c:935]: Failure impact: sim/operation/failures/rel_runITT0
2022-04-17 17:48:00 TBM900[fail.c:932]: Component turbines has failed due to excessive wear (worn: 100.000000%, slope 0.0). You can prevent this by observing performance limitations and servicing the aircraft regularly in the maintenance hangar.
2022-04-17 17:48:00 TBM900[fail.c:935]: Failure impact: sim/operation/failures/rel_engfir0
2022-04-17 17:48:00 TBM900[fail.c:932]: Component combustion liner has failed due to excessive wear (worn: 100.000000%, slope 0.2). You can prevent this by observing performance limitations and servicing the aircraft regularly in the maintenance hangar.
2022-04-17 17:48:00 TBM900[fail.c:935]: Failure impact: sim/operation/failures/rel_engfla0
2022-04-17 17:48:00 TBM900[fail.c:932]: Component combustion liner has failed due to excessive wear (worn: 100.000000%, slope 0.0). You can prevent this by observing performance limitations and servicing the aircraft regularly in the maintenance hangar.
2022-04-17 17:48:00 TBM900[

 

The pics are my cruise at 25k - i then initiated a FLC to 30k feet without adjusting power at all, and a few minutes later had the failure. This is on a new airframe that I generated just for this flight - at no point prior to this did any engine parameters hit the red.

 

fail.c:935]: Failure impact: sim/operation/failures/rel_engfai0
2022-04-17 17:48:02 TBM900[elec.c:1210]: MAIN GEN tripped (46.5A, 28.4V, rpm: 0)

 

 

[Leviathan]

Alright, I might have figured one clue out. I'm flying a 600 mile flight and I've (as you can see) I'm speeding up simulator time, to about 3x. So in real life, I fly for less than an hour before this happens, and in the sim with the time sped up, at most I hit 3 or so hours before this engine thing happens. Now, after landing this thing with the engine on fire yet again and checking the engine state... I assee the entire engine component panel is showing my engine runtime as 22.2 hrs? Is speeding up simulator time doing something to my engines?

 

[Leviathan]

So friends, apparently I am almost a complete dumbass. 

It would appear that every time I filled up my engines I neglected to close the fuel caps - in fact, I did not know they were modelled. With the caps closed after fueling (I hadn't seen the caps because the fuel amount window occluded it), everything seems to be fine. Will report back after a few hopefully successful flights. 

[Leviathan]

Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd it did it again. 

I really don't know what the issue is.

[Leviathan]

Interesting.

So there's basically a problem/bug with increasing sim time and this airplane. I have now tested this on 4 flights/airframes and 2 different installs. Basically, at 3X sim speed (not ground speed, sim speed, which theoretically shouldn't be deleteriously affecting anything) the TBM 900 engine 'ages' 7-8x. For example, in a normal speed 2 hour flight - at the end of the flight, check the engines... 2.0 hours runtime. Now, do a 2 hour flight but speed up the sim to 3X speed, check the runtime - 9 hours. So what was happening to me for the 15 hours or so that I was figuring this out is that about 2 or so hours (realtime) into my 3x sim speed flight, the engine had 'worn out' to about 25 hours of runtime, and then failed. Now I haven't had the plane long enough to know, but I'm assuming that at about 20 hours of runtime, the engine maintenance panel is going to start turning yellow or whatever, and that I'll need to be servicing various engine parts. But in 3X sim speed, that 20 hour mark came and went mid flight, and it appears to be random but around the 24-25 hours of runtime mark the combustion fails. 

Anyway, hope this proves useful to somebody else in the future. 

[CJSouthern]

I had the engine shut down mid flight once (was at 100.2% NG off memory). Never really got to the bottom of it, but it did draw my attention to a number of areas that I didn't know about:

1. Make sure that the accelerated wear model isn't ticked in the maintenance manager.

2. Personally, I check the maintenance manager after every flight -- might pay to zero out everything at the first sign of wear (it's not like it'll cost us real dollars).

3. Ensure that X-Plane isn't set to throw in random failures.

Personally, I never really change the sim speed; instead, I just leave the AP on and set a timer on my watch set to for the next event (usually TOD).

For me the model has been very reliable, but I have had a few "funnies"; the engine shutting off that day was one. Chocks reappearing quite often is another. Throttle transitioning from high idle to normal operation with only low idle to high idle has been commanded (this improved (but wasn't eliminated) after I had to completely reload my PC from scratch after an issue) - and new "doosy" whereby I'll try to change the FLC speed with the mouse and it keeps changing the altitude selected instead.

Few others that might (but I don't think so) be finger trouble that are AP related. I've just learned to live with them; most are pretty minor in the grand scheme of things ... just too time consuming to try and track them down (keeping in mind too that I don't have any addons installed). Just the nature of the beast IMHO; hellishly complex pieces of software that are only 99.9999% perfect.