[Citationkid]

This thread is meant to be a learning experience for others. If you want to critique my decision making, please do it polietly or via PM.

About three weeks ago the CHT (it is a single probe indicator, it just happened to be on the bad cylinder) started slowly creeping up from an average of about 350* to 375* and then finally up to about 400* in the climb. I fly an average of 20 hours per week, so the change per flight was relatively small. I told our mechanics, but got the typical "Just keep an eye on it" responce.

I left yesterday on a 400nm mile trip from one hard IFR airport to another, with quite a bit of rain inbetween. Climbing out yesterday through about 10,000' the CHT was about 400* and then BAM. The airplane yawed hard and it just started vibrating.

I could not even tell which engine it was though, as no indications changed. So in my mind it could have been either engine or it may not have even been engine related.

After calling Washington Center three times I got yelled at to shut up because he was busy on another frequency. I told him I was going to need his attention for a few minutes, and he was kind enough to give it to me! Luckily I was only about 20 miles north of my home base, which was reporting 2300 few and 3000 overcast.

To make a long story short, I landed at my home base and taxiied up to the MX shop. When they pulled the cowling off a piece of the cylinder fell out and a bit of fuel leaked out aswell.

Lessons learned:

Any time your airplane does anything out of the ordinary tell some one and have them do something about it. I could also feel the plane running just slightly rough the past few weeks. When it would get to that cylinder I would just feel a little (and I mean very little) bump kind of go through the plane. I just thought it was my imagination.

I was washing the plane the other day and moved the prop. When I did I heard a whooshing sound. It was air coming out of that crack in the cylinder (which at that time was only as think as a hair). Again I told the mechanics and was told "That's normal". It wasn't. The starter also seemed weak. This was due to the leak in the cylinder. There were quite a few signs telling me the cylinder was about to go, I just needed to pay more attention. In the future I will.

If something goes wrong and you do not know what it is or why it went wrong, land as soon as you can. This easily could have turned into a fire with the fuel leaking out if I had decided to fly to an airport with better MX facilities.

That's all,

Alex.