LAX00LA275 · Steel/Vans RV6
Steel/Vans RV6 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Winnemucca Municipal Airport (WMC) to Elko Regional Airport (EKO)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX00LA275
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Steel/Vans RV6
- Aircraft type
- Steel/vans RV6
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N64ME
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Winnemucca Municipal Airport (WMC)To Elko Regional Airport (EKO), Elko, NV
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- En route · cruise
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Total loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Engine accessories, oil cooler actuating assembly › Not installed
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, rebuild/remanufacture, improper
- Powerplant › Overtemperature
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After losing engine power, the amateur-built airplane encountered soft soil and nosed over after overrunning the runway during a forced landing at the airport. The flight left the San Francisco Bay area earlier in the day and was en route ultimately to Oshkosh, Wisconsin. In cruise the pilot saw that the engine oil temperature was nearing the upper limit and landed at the airport for it to cool off. After about an hour on the ground, the pilot performed a detailed preflight inspection and run-up, with no abnormalities detected. The pilot then departed for the next en route stop. About 10 minutes after departure, the engine oil temperature climbed once more to the red line limit and the pilot decided to turn around. Shortly thereafter, the oil temperature exceeded the red line limit and the engine began to lose power. The pilot reduced the throttle and set up for a landing on a highway and the engine power partially returned. The pilot then attempted to continue to the airport; however, the engine lost power short of the facility. The pilot said she was able to reach the runway, but was too low to make any traffic pattern maneuvers, and too high to land normally. The airplane touched down slightly fast near the halfway point on the runway and was unable to stop prior to overrunning the pavement end. The airplane encountered soft, sandy soil and nosed over. Disassembly of the engine found that the vernatherm was not installed, allowing the oil supply to bypass the oil cooler. The records disclosed that the engine was built-up about 90 hours prior to the accident by a firm which specializes in performance improvement rebuilds for the experimental aircraft market. The engine is a basic Lycoming IO-360 with several modifications for power improvement.
Probable cause
A loss of power due to overheating resulting from the failure of the engine build-up facility to install a vernatherm.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX00LA275
- Event ID
- 20001212X21515
- Case number
- LAX00LA275
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: a1f9f20759b8860e5a69392501b7283d38e30a7d61be0f7ef8898bbdd3f2dd34; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:08:56.634Z.