DXB

oops typo - meant 3.5hrs/qt, not the inverse... which is consistent with the formula

It's been a long time since I've been on Air Canada - sounds much worse than I recall. I mostly fly American in the US. Obviously modern service is far below what is once was in the golden age of aviation, but their cabin crew almost always seem competent, polite, hard-working, and professional. On my last flight, being served by two overweight middle aged men in the cabin made me chuckle a bit, reminding me how much things have changed from the days of stewardesses in short dresses and height, weight, and age requirements. Those two guys were great though, and that particular change is probably for the best.

Just don't get a ACK E-04 ELT, total POS. 8 years after install, it has started false alarming relentlessly. And when it goes off, it's very hard to silence - keeps triggering again and again. Company claims adjacent wiring caused it but nothing was changed for years before it started acting up. I disabled it I make sure my PLB is handy for now. I'll replace it with an Artex one in the next year ($$$) - they even made a version of their panel mount controller that fits into the cutout for the ACK because so many folks need to replace those.

Glad the people are ok. Hope the reason for loss of power can be discerned under all that fire damage.

I quit doing in flight mag checks after I got mine put in for this reason. One option is to pull the mixture briefly before switching back, but that's not something I enjoy. Good idea to simply reduce power. I would note that even at standard runup power I sometimes get a faint backfire sound. I should probably do the runups lean rather than full rich per POH.

@carusoam thanks for thinking of me - I have bladders plus CiES

This awful tragedy happened despite what sounds like a reasonably capable pilot and aircraft, and it's a sobering reminder that being over low IMC in a piston single is awfully precarious if you need to get down quickly. I don't think that I could fly an ILS effectively down to 300 under this kind of stress, particularly if I had to adjust my control inputs to compensate for a weak, vibrating engine. I do wonder if leaning on synthetic vision could have helped them get just below the cloud deck in good position to land in this dire situation when there may be no time and/or presence of mind to fly a real approach. Even my newer Ipad mini with Foreflight seems to have pretty serviceable synthetic vision, which I play around with occasionally but have never actually used as a reference to fly the plane. I think it could help you avoid obstacles and put you in good position to land at 300 agl, but perhaps not without practice in advance. Practicing using it in a focused way with an instructor on board to mimic this type of condition might be a life saver.

You need a Slick harness, so only if you are replacing a Bendix mag - I wasn't sure OP mentioned mag type?

Yeah this is probably the way to go for an IO360 in the modern world rather than fuss over the SOS system. The benefits far outweigh the potential issues. If one wants to make the replacement as similar as possible to the mag, just set it to fixed timing when installing.

Mine is prone to pop open routinely, and its been that way as long as I've had the plane. Three different A&Ps with knowledge of the mechanism on the vintage planes have worked on it on my '68C. It is not trivial to get working right. The only thing that clearly helped was putting fresh tight new seals on the door. As those have softened over the years, the handle will come up slightly now with the vibration of starting the engine. If one ignores this, the door will pop open during takeoff. It's part of my final before takeoff flow now with the takeoff clearance - door handle down, mixture full, boost pump on....

As a rank amateur, this incident reminds me that I've managed to botch the ground communication and/or taxi instructions in one way or other when departing every single large busy airport where I've been. That goes for KMDW, KFLL, KTEB, and KOPF. Once cleared for takeoff, the challenge at these places rapidly abates, and I no longer feel in over my head. Thankfully I've had no runway incursions to date, but this thread is a great reminder to respect that red sign with runway numbers on it, think carefully if I'm cleared across that exact runway at that intersection, ask if I'm not sure, and verbalize looking both ways when crossing.

Yikes that's horrifying. Kudos to the controller for the firm split second reaction.

One other thought - check the routing of your breather tube - they should go up for a bit before being routed down. There may be other positioning issues that increase oil escaping. That would explain oil exiting a case that's not pressurized and oil that doesn't turn black from blowby

Great point - my brief search indicates they do not. Can anyone else comment on how the OP might be getting high oil combustion without also getting a lot of blowby? It seems like the main mechanism would be burning oil that the oil control ring fails to clear. Or could oil come through a trashed valve guide? I'm at the limit of my largely Mike Busch-derived knowledge here. Yeah agree nothing to go crazy over. It would be nice to figure out which mechanism of oil loss predominates in your case though - I'm not sure I get it yet.

Not true. 3.5 hrs/qt is airworthy, not dangerous in and of itself if cause is blowby. That is identical to my current oil consumption, and I add the same amount. My oil turns and stays black after 10 hours or so despite the added oil.

Oil only gets out 3 ways - blown out the breather, consumed in combustion, leaking out directly. If you were leaking that much oil it would be ridiculously obvious. If the oil is not black after 30hrs then it's not likely to be blowby, even with dilution with the added fresh oil (in comparison - I add the same amount of oil as you and my oil turns black by10 hours and stays black until I change it at 30hrs. In your case, that leaves oil consumed by combustion. In this situation Mike Busch would tell you to use your borescope to look at the intake valve stems. If they are oily, then oil is getting sucked into the combustion chamber on the intake stroke from the rocker box. The fix for that is changing the intake valve oil seal, which is straightforward. https://resources.savvyaviation.com/wp-content/uploads/articles_eaa/EAA_2014-02_high-oil-consumption.pdf

Most will have some oil on the belly behind the breather tube exit from the left cowl flap - it's a matter of how much appears and how fast after cleaning it off - so a bit subjective. How fast the oil turns black is more objective. There are also means of measuring crank case pressure - perhaps the most objective when measuring blowby but rarely done. Also it's not the standard fouling with combustion byproducts including lead we're talking about. The plugs get wet with oil when the oil control ring doesn't do its job. Some oil on a bottom plug is common and not necessarily abnormal. Seeing oil on the top plug is another story.

It's airworthy and acceptable just based on that consumption value alone. However, it's worth considering where the oil is going - is there oily residue on the exhaust pipe? Most likely not - it's probably on the belly. If the oil turns black pretty quickly (within 10 hrs of change) that's diagnostic for high ring blowby pushing oil mist out the breather. Then the question is whether it is simply the crosshatch being polished out on all 4 cylinders (highly plausible at 1900 SMOH) or is there evidence of one offending cylinder (e.g. stuck oil control ring which may leave you with pooled oil in the cylinder and an oily top plug and /or a broken compression ring which may show up as deep scores on the sidewall when you borescope). Having a ton of oil accumulating in one cylinder can increase detonation/pre-ignition risks. One may not be too enthusiastic to rework a cylinder at 1900 SMOH under these conditions unless anything looks dangerous, just for the sake of decreasing oil consumption. For comparison I've put 1100 hrs on the same engine as yours in the last 8 years of ownership ,and it's at 1600 SMOH, but overhaul was back in 2000. I've done lots of cylinder work in that interval. Best oil consumption I've seen is ~1qt/9hr, now it's down to it's worst at 1qt/3hr. The most problematic seems to be #4, which does oil up the top plug even though I replaced it only 200 hrs ago. A ring flush had no effect. I think my engine is perfectly safe for now but may just overhaul it rather than do more cylinder work if it goes much higher.

Is there any point to painting them besides aesthetics? Not being a pain, am genuinely curious. Same with the intake tubes - mine are painted but some were done better than others and so have a lot of surface rust on them. They seem unlikely to crack through in the life of the engine though so I haven't worried about it.

The initially reduced EGT on the purple cylinder seems to support that's where the problem is? CHT should be low there also. I'll let others weigh in on whether that's diagnostic of a sticky exhaust valve or a transient fuel issue could explain it (I suspect not but I don't understand the fuel injected systems very well). Sticky valve is no joke - I'd be hesitant to fly without it being address. Having it stick hard can lead to a very bad day.

Not sure but overall story is pretty classic for "morning sickness" from a sticky exhaust valve guide. If so, the engine monitor would greatly help support the hypothesis and identify the offending cylinder (or develop a different hypothesis). Hopefully you have a data logging function on your engine monitor.

I think that might cause a deeper discharge and thus more harm to the battery than a capacity tester? I’m not sure though.

On a related note, I've been fooled into thinking my Battery Minder was dead when actually the 10A fuse in the connector cable between the Minder and the battery had blown. Unfortunately relatively few shops have proper capacity testers, and one could by a lot of batteries for the price of buying a capacity tester yourself. Without ready access to one, I think it's now my default to replace my Concorde between year 4 and 5 or at first sign of issues. A strong battery is such an important system in face of an alternator failure, particularly in a single battery alternator plane, that keeping a good condition battery should be viewed as paramount to safety. This is even more true now with so many of us having Surefly mags, which have a small draw from the battery even when the plane is sitting with master - also making a Battery Minder even more important. Hopefully the emerging Lithium batteries for planes will add some battery longevity and greater reliability to the electrical system when the STCs become available.

You're absolutely right about Mike Busch's idea. Unfortunately I think most sellers would also rightly balk at pulling a cylinder just to look at the bottom end. Plus you may need to pull two for a good look. Compression checks, borescope exam, and checking the screen and filter at least 10 hours after oil change is probably where most would draw the line. .On another note I think valuation algorithms do a terrible job of incorporating data on how much time an engine has sat unused or how much recent use it's seen while accumulating the hours SMOH. If there was a valuation standard that included this data, a lot of these arguments at sale would be much easier to head off.

I'd never heard of this Iithium EarthX option - it sounds really cool!! Longer useful life could offset the extra cost, and larger capacity could make it a major safety feature in case of an alternator failure. And the weight savings is awesome! It looks like it has its own battery management system to prevent overcharge etc. Is there any info on the STC for Mooney? I couldn't find anything online. Also I wonder how suited it is to the battery box up front in C models, not only fit but also temperature environment, despite the box being ventilated via a tube from the doghouse. My Concorde is pretty new, so need to be an early adopter, but hopefully my next battery in a few years will use this technology.