Hmmm.. do you know something we don’t ZRX.? If not i’m sure we will all know the truth when Elly and co get to the bottom of it.

I’ve come across that problem twice before & I could see how someone could miss one of those plastic plugs/caps.

That’s assuming they didn’t get a duff engine from the O/H shop. I’m not sure how much a fresh 1820 goes for these days, but the 2 1340’s I’ve changed in the past 2 months were around $35K (exchange, depending on damage to core etc) or about $43K outright buy with no exchange. The cause of those 2 swaps were one grenaded the blower section (but the crank was unharmed) & the other was just flat knackered @2300 hours.
The SallyB site says they received 360K from the sale of the land donation last year so they should be able to buy an engine from a reputable O/H shop.
The 2 1340’s I just hung were both Covingtons. I’ve been hearing good things recently about Anderson motors & bad things about Precision. Another name in the ring now is Nixon as he bought out Aircraft Cylinder in Sunland & moved the entire operation up to Tehachapi, so now we have Vintage Radials next to Vintage V12’s 🙂

I have every respect for the B17 Team and their engineers, its bad luck nothing more,

I have a feeling that Sally B isn’t operated on good/bad luck. I know none of the aircraft I work on operate on that principle… & as I said before 3 engines is WAY beyond bad luck.