Todd.
Black oil is a result of blow by past the pistons or valve guides. An engine with 70 hours should not have these problems. But since you indicated that these 70 hours happened over a 6 year time frame, I suspect that the engine did not have a chance to be run in properly. The rings may have not fully seated. I would use either straight mineral oil for the next 25 hours or multi grade oil, which is recommended by some as run-in oil as well. If your oil still is pitch black like tar after a few hours of flight then, you can decide to live with the fact, provided the oil consumption is acceptable or have some cylinder work done. But the latter you might want to postpone until one cylinder give you serious signs of deterioration, like low compression or so. The continental engine is used in many other aircraft as well, it is nothing Ercoupe specific that will turn the oil black. Hartmut To: [email protected] From: [email protected] Date: Sat, 21 Mar 2009 02:39:22 +0000 Subject: [ercoupe-tech] Oil turning black Hi guys, This is my first post to the forum but I have been following it since July of last year when I bought my Ercoupe 415C. I am a student and I am about a week or two away from my check ride. I flew with my instructor tonight and she mentioned that she thought the oil looked a little black for only having 6 or 7 hours since the last oil change. Comparing it the the Cessna 172 she thought it looked like it had 50 hours on the oil. The engine runs great and burns about 1 quart of oil every 8 hours. It was rebuilt in 2003 and has about 70 total hours since it was overhauled. At the last annual the compression was good on all the cylanders and the oil pressure is steady and in the green. Is this normal for an Ercoupe? I will be having my annual in about a month and I will have the mechanic look at it but I was interested what others thought. Thanks. Todd Fischer N87086 _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live™ SkyDrive: Get 25 GB of free online storage. http://windowslive.com/online/skydrive?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_skydrive_032009
