REFLECTOR: Need Troubleshooting ideas

[Jeff Barnes]

Hi John, 
 
   Maybe this translates to your engine, moybe not. This was posted on canard-aviators at 1:23pm today.  From Marc Zeitlen:
 
>> snip follows
Folks:

While working on my plane yesterday, I had a discussion with Mike 
Melvill regarding some engine problems he'd been having with his 
relatively new O-360 on his Long-EZ.

He had found very high oil usage over the last few hours of flying, 
especially on a trip to Texas a few weeks ago. His engine was losing 
about 1 qt./hr of flight time. There was no oil pooling in the 
cowling, VERY little anywhere on the engine, nor was there a stream of 
it anyplace in particular. He DID notice a very slight leak at the 
base of one cylinder as well as oil on the propeller. He had recently 
replaced the nose seal, as there had been a slight oil leak there 
which the replacement had stopped.

He removed the cylinders on one side, thinking that he would need to 
replace the cylinder base gasket/seal. While talking to Lycoming 
about what might be going on, the question of the oil breather line 
came up, and Mike checked the internals of the connection - the 
external line was clear.

As it turned out, the breather line connection was partially plugged 
with carbon deposits, making it very difficult to breath through. 
According to the Lycoming rep., the engine WILL breath, and if not 
through the breather, through somewhere else. He told Mike that a 
relatively common thing that happens in this case is that oil is 
forced up past the oil scraper rings, past the compression rings, and 
into the cylinders, where it's (mostly) burned and comes out the 
exhaust. Hence the lack of any large quantities of oil in the cowl or 
on the engine, and the small amount of oil on the prop.

The rep. told Mike that in tractor configurations, if you're LEAKING a 
qt/hr, you'll have oil dripping off the tail light, because there'll 
be oil everywhere. Not quite so with the pusher configuration, but he 
said that if you can't find the qt/hr that you're losing, it is most 
probably going out the pipes, and that this could be a strong 
indication that the breather line is clogged.

Mike cleaned the breather attachment, put the engine back together, 
and flew for an hour. No oil usage whatsoever. Bingo.

Interesting bit of information that neither Mike or I knew before - I 
thought others might be interested as well.

-- 
Marc J. Zeitlin mailto:marc_zeitlin@ alum.mit. edu
http://www.cozybuil ders.org/
 
<< end snip
 
 
Call me if you'd like me to check my CSA roster for some help at CHO.
 
regards,
 
Jeff Barnes
847-331-2567 cell 

--- On Sat, 6/13/09, aminetech at bluefrog.com <aminetech at bluefrog.com> wrote:


From: aminetech at bluefrog.com <aminetech at bluefrog.com>
Subject: Re: REFLECTOR: Need Troubleshooting ideas
To: "Velocity Aircraft Owners and Builders list" <reflector at tvbf.org>
Date: Saturday, June 13, 2009, 4:05 PM


This sounds strange, but I see a lot of oil around the filler cap.  I bought the cap at Auto Zone and it has worked fine for 3/4 years.

--- aminetech at bluefrog.com wrote:

From: <aminetech at bluefrog.com>
To: "Velocity Aircraft Owners and Builders list" <reflector at tvbf.org>
Subject: REFLECTOR: Need Troubleshooting ideas
Date: Sat, 13 Jun 2009 13:40:11 -0700

I'm at Chattanooga, TN (CHO) with a considerable oil leak.  I flew from the MS coast.  My oil temp was higher than normal, but still within the limit.  After 1 1/2 hours the temp began climbing.  I think it might have been because I was flying near a thunderstorm and the downdraft was putting me into a climb attitude without realizing it.  I landed and everything looked OK.  Just the usual samll oil leaks.  After taking off the oil temp climbed quickly and ran near around 108 C for most of the way.  CHTs were normal (130 C) Upon landing the engine was running rough and the bottom of the fuselage is fairly covered with oil.  I will appreciate any ideas.

Thanks,

John

Franklin/IVO
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