Bob Urban wrote: > > You have just made my C-85 day, Bob. > I was in the dumps over a quart every three hours of Aeroshell 100W. > Anybody care to SHARE THE TRUTH about their bird's oil appetite? > > Cheers, > Bob Urban > ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > > My oil consumption has been a quart every two hours for > > the last 100 hours or so. The only really effective solution to your problem > > is new cyclinders but oil is cheap. > > Good luck, > > Bob Condon
In the old days, my bird blew out about a quart each tank of fuel. I was fairly sure it just blew away because the exhaust wasn't oily but the rest of the engine compartment and the airframe down the left side certainly were oily! When I was editor of the Coupe Capers back 91-94, we had an extensive discussion about this blow-out problem. Some planes (all?) get air blowing out the breather tube. I'm not enough of a mechanic to know if this is leaking exhaust gases getting around the rings or what. Maybe old rings get more exhaust gas blow-by. An acquaintance in Kalona, Iowa, bought a plane with a newly overhauled O-200. He had to make a forced landing on his first flight when he ran out of oil (dropping pressure) about an hour and a half into his ferry flight home. He did the following: a. Angle the breather elbow 45 degress upward to the rear and have the breather hose go over the cylinders and then, behind the engine, go down to the bottom of the engine compartment. This helped some. b. he installed an air-oil separator in the breather line which drained the captured oil back into the engine oil sump. This helped more but he was sure frustrated that it didn't solve the problem. c. He then installed a breather tube extension that went some distance from the elbow into the crankshaft. This makes the air intake of the breather some distance from the crankshaft wall. This pretty much solved the problem. As explained to me, the oil in the crankcase splashes around (I guess this is intentional) and gets on everything including the inner walls of the crankcase. There was talk that the downward cant to the engine contributes to this splashing in a Coupe but I can't confirm that. When air is being blown out the breather tube --> and the tube entrance is flush with the crankcase wall <-- the oil on the crankcase wall just flows right out the breather tube. If the extension is soldered into the elbow so that a pipe is extending into the crankcase away from the wall, the oil on the wall doesn't flow into the tube -- just air goes out the tube. I've heard enough testemonials of the effectiveness to go along with a reasonable face-value explanation to give credence to this method. The people who have tried this told me it was almost completely effective in stopping blow-out. I bought my elbow extension from the late Burt Ellegaard. It does seem to have cured my problem. I haven't flown enough since I was grounded with diabetes to be able to quote quarts per hour numbers. It just stopped being an issue when I landed for fuel stops. It does nothing to oil burn. Sorry, but I don't have handy the detailed descriptions we put in Coupe Capers back then. It is supposed to be very easy (to someone with tools and knowledge) to make this elbow extension. I don't know about that one. Hope this helps. -- Ed Burkhead East Peoria, Ill. N3802H, 415-D
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