A64Pilot

I just use a regular plastic gas can, put 100LL on it with a Sharpie. but first while the can is clean and fume free, install a vent and defeat that CARB crap that causes spills. Use a step drill not a regular bit, the step drill will leave a clean hole where a twist bit will leave the hole twisted, but a vent is a wonderful thing to have, I’ve not put one on a metal can so I can’t attest to that, but they work great on plastic

Most of the common Glycol anti-freeze is VERY toxic, and will kill the airport dog and any other animals that drink it, they die from kidney failure which is not a comfortable death. It tastes sweet so they will happily lap up a lethal amount. There are non toxic auto antifreezes, and of course the RV anti-freeze is safe. I believe it’s mostly the type of alcohol, but car anti-freeze may have anti corrosive chemicals etc. So please, buy the non toxic stuff, it works just as well. It’s Ethylene Glycol that’s toxic, Propylene Glycol isn’t. https://spca.bc.ca/faqs/antifreeze/

often you can rent torpedo or radiant propane heaters at an equipment rental place, maybe you can’t heat the whole hanger, but blowing 100+F air on an airplane over time will melt ice. Me, I don’t do ice, got caught in an ice storm in Tx of all places, put the 210 in a hanger, rented a car and came back to it in a couple of days. Once on a delivery I stayed I believe in Snow Mass overnight with all the biz jets, Snowed pretty heavy that night, but just snow as it was below freezing before the snowing started. Got to the FBO to pay the ridiculous overnight tie down fee, and the little girl behind the counter said I had to be de-iced. I told her i I didn’t have to be de-iced, but out of curiosity what would it cost. She said it was a couple of hundred to move the truck, then I think close to 100 for each gl of fluid used, I’d need at least ten gls or something. (Truck was parked beside my aircraft) So I said no thank you and she again said I HAD to be de-iced, that was their policy, I would have to talk to the airport manager. I ignored her and left, as I was lightweight and the snow brushed off clean I wasn’t too worried, All of the snow was gone before rotation,but there was some time where I was completely blind from it. I bet it looked pretty from outside. ‘My one snow/ice story, most of my stories are Tropical Storms etc, I don’t do cold.

When the oil is hot, 15W-50 and straight 50W have the same viscosity, that is to say that straight weight oil is not thicker and won’t hold onto the cam longer when it’s hot. and who shuts down a cold motor? Sure it’s thicker when cold, but how is that any kind of advantage? Most of the oil manufacturers state that the multi vis oil is their best oil and they manufacture straight weight for those that want it, but recommend the multi vis. Lycoming goes on and on about how much better multi vis oil is for their turbo motors and pretty much says nothing about the NA motors, but it seems pretty obvious they think the multi vis is “better” better meaning better able to handle higher temps and stress. For just about all petroleum products the “premium” product has a better additive package than the less expensive alternative, Premium auto fuel for example usually has a better detergent package than regular, it’s not just the difference in Octane,Chevron for instance has more Techron per gl in their Premium. I just can’t make a case for not using whatever brand you chose premium product, and change it frequently.

This is my second airplane with a (D) mag. As long as parts are available for the mag I see no real difference between the two including safety. Its my understanding that there is no conversion path, the only way to get dual mags is to replace the engine which is most often a very expensive proposition. If I have to overhaul my current engine, I’ll keep the (D) mag, the cam and whether or not it has DLC lifters is way more important to me. (it’s my understanding that rollers are essentially another engine change) and therefore beyond my financial resources. If I had a run out engine and wanted a Lycoming exchange, then I’d certainly be interested

This is of course RV antifreeze, it’s cheap and usually Walmart or any RV store or West Marine has it, one big advantage of it is that it’s not toxic as it’s meant to treat drinking water systems, car anti-freeze however is usually toxic and tastes sweet so it can kill any dogs or other animals that happen to drink it, it’s also more expensive.

Personally I’d remove both doors meaning from the other side too and fly it to destination, in the unlikely event anyone questioned me, my response would be aren’t gear doors like wheel pants? I’d expect at most if your apologetic and not argumentative the most that could happen would be a slap on the wrist. ‘Ferry permits aren’t guaranteed and I wouldn’t be surprised if you were turned down, because of lack of data with doors removed I wouldn't fly with it like it is, flight loads could cause further damage

Your right, it is a Callair. I knew Rockwell owned the Callair TC among others, but was more familiar with the A-9 Callair. I don’t think the B2 was put into production but a derivative of the Snow S-2 called the Thrush was as Aero Commander also owned Snow’s TC’s. Thrush still owns the old Air Tractor TC’s Rockwell, later Aero Commander built the A9 and called it the Quail. Many of the AeroCommander aircraft were named after birds. The factory Hollywood call sign is “Tough Bird” to this day whatever that’s worth.

A lot depends on oil level if I try to maintain 7 qts I’ll go through oil very quickly. If I use 6 as a max an not top off until 5 I’ll use half the oil I had an IO-540 that burned one quart every 5 hours, it had about 1900 hours on it when I prop struck it, So I did a very meticulous overhaul, new Millieium cylinders etc. After a short break-in, it burned one quart every 5 hours. I’ve seen engines burn a quart every few hours and yet met new specs on tear down, and I’ve seen some that burned one every 10 that had significant wear. I would say that oil consumption within the normal range just isn’t the smoking gun we think it is, now a sudden change is though

I figure some kind of Snow, but as far as I know, none ever had external struts? Being in this picture makes me think Commander at least considered production?

The Lark, Darter and Quail as well as the Meyers 200D (Commander 200) were built in the Albany Ga plant by Aero Commander, they were all purchased to be manufactured and for whatever reason none were successful. The 114 Commander was also built and Certified there, maybe the 112 also? Only aircraft that ever was successful from that plant was the Thrush Crop Duster. The yellow Ag plane in this picture is not a Thrush, I don't know what it is, if anyone does I’d like to hear what it is. I believe they all have at least some steel tubing and all have a reputation of being overbuilt if somewhat heavy.

Running LOP and with modern oils in temperate climates etc., do you hanger or tie out etc, you might could even go 100 hours between changes and or 6 months or longer before the oil actually”needs” changing based say on TAN and TBN from analysis. Howevef oil is at its best the moment it pours from the bottle, from that moment on its degrading, some may want to wait until it’s actually no longer providing essential lubrication, many want to change well before then and buy additional cushion, couple that with compared to other aircraft expenses and the fact that a pilot can do this themselves often leads to very short intervals, and sometimes these shorter intervals may help detect problems before they become critical and or expensive. So is a 25 hour OCI required? Usually not. Will it hurt anything? No. can it help? usually not, but it could, and it certainly won’t cause harm. Finally which aircraft would you buy, one with a 3 month OCI in the books or one with a 50 hour OCI whenever it took to reach 50 hours? For whatever it’s worth the US Army decades ago went to analysis to determine when the oil needed changing on its trucks etc. The OCI went from even 6 months to now often years between changes

Usually you can get a very good idea just from a walk around. Having said that, it’s difficult but possible to hide severe corrosion, but that almost always means spending a lot of time and money replacing exterior corrosion, so a good look is necessary before money is spent, but a good walk around can usually cull a lot of ones not worth looking deep. I learned pretty quickly to not even bother going to see Fl airplanes that were tied down outside, it just ages an airplane fast, and when your looking at 40ish yr old airplanes to begin with, accelerated aging can hurt. it’s my opinion as an A&P/IA that buying an airplane to fix up is a losing proposition, buy what you want as a finished product, it will end up costing less and save a lot of heart ache

I’m not saying this is why,but wood usually does a very good job of dampening vibrations.

Assuming it’s properly done there is almost never any metal from break-in, and what there is is almost microscopic. Mchining tolerances are simply light years ahead of where they were when these engines were designed. Most metal I maintain comes from the machining processes and wasn’t cleaned out well enough, try this on a recently overhauled cylinder, clean it out with mineral spirits or a rag and auto xmsn fluid or whatever your favorite cleaning is, then after your sure it’s clean, clean it again with a rag and hot soapy water, you’ll be surprised at how much grey material you get out, that material is of course stone from honing and metal from the cylinder. Hot soapy water cleans very well You’ll also be surprised how fast that cylinder will flash rust if you don’t immediately dry and oil it. Assuming the machining is properly done, a good overhaul is essentially already broken in, which is not to say don’t follow break in procedures, just don’t be surprised if your engine never burns excess oil, even in the first five hours.

It’s extremely common for guys on floats to turn 100 RPM over, they have been doing this for decades with no issue. I had my Maule set 100 over. Those of us that add 100 RPM, reduce to redline soon after TO though, we don’t do long climbs over redline Its surprising how much 100 RPM helps get a floatplane on step. I wouldn’t bother with 50. My Mooney won’t quite make 2700, but I’m not going to bother with it either, but all I have is the factory 40 yr old tach too, so who knows what it is exactly. These engines were designed long before digital accuracy existed, they don’t necessarily require it

Do NOT add anything to the fuel, especially non approved additives like two stroke oil. two stroke oil among other things is very unlikely to improve any lubrication as the whole cylinder gets washed in undiluted oil under the rings and also it reduces the octane of fuel. Don’t do anything the engine manufacturer doesn’t recommend, these engines have been being overhauled for a very long time, the approved process works. Your metal seems normal to me, although I’d change oil more frequently until it stops making metal. Most of that metal may be simply being washed out and not actual wear material depending on what and how much machining was done. I want the metal flushed out quickly. Engines with problems increase the amount of metal they make and from what I’ve seen, if there is a problem, you get LOTS of metal, and quickly. Cylinder break in is done when oil consumption stabilizes and on engines I’ve overhauled that has always happened rather quickly, but most of my experience is with NA engines, blown motors ought to break in even faster.

In theory the formula still works as it is based on best power mixture so theoretically the fuel flow is reduced with manifold pressure drop We take off and climb well rich of best power so it is what it is, there are other considerations like cyl head temp of course

I doubt HP difference is from restricted fuel flow, however I’d suspect possibly restricted airflow, I know nothing at all about those two engines but timing ought to be easy to look up. restricting fuel flow at high power can give bad results so I doubt that’s it. I’d suspect differences in induction systems, and possibly how the engines are rated, many aircraft engines are rated conservatively, reduce some of that conservatism and get a higher rating. There can be a lot of power in “tuning” induction systems. The Lyc IO-360 has the same rating at two different timing settings, pretty sure the advanced timing results in higher power, but also of course higher cyl head temps. There is enough conservatism so that it still makes spec power with the timing turned down. Engine monitors derive percent power from calculation of course and many I’ve seen weren’t very good at it.

Remember there are asking prices and there are getting prices, often the prices we see advertised are asking prices, so don’t assume those high numbers are actually selling at those numbers. However having an airplane your thinking about selling now may be similar to a house in 2007, so if your considering it, I’d sell now.

While I will not say that Gami’s are a gimmick, that’s sacrilegious on this site and there will be hordes with torches and pitchforks. I will say on the two airplanes that I installed Gami’s on, an IO-540 and an IO-520 that fine wire tempests made more difference than Gami’s did, and that was two engines that most say “need” Gami’s. My Gann “performance” IO-360 engine is the poster child for LOP, I swear you could land the airplane with mixture it runs so smooth at extreme lean mixtures. and doesn’t have Gami injectors. However if for whatever reason you need to replace stock injectors, I believe Gami’s are less expensive and are as good as OEM from what I have seen. I do not have Gami’s nor do I have an engine monitor and most of my cruising is done LOP. You don’t need either to safely run LOP, just never try LOP at high power settings and you will be fine. Usually LOP is done to reduce fuel consumption, and another way to reduce fuel consumption is of course to slow down, so the way to reduce fuel consumption the most is to do both. I climb to cruise altitude which for me is usually between 3 and 8 thousand or so, reduce to 22 squared and lean to 7 GPH, at that low power you can’t hurt the motor no matter what you do with mixture, and that gives me just under 130 kt cruise, which is fast enough for me, and is very economical. Spending thousands on equipment to save a few dollars on fuel from an economy perspective just doesn’t make sense to me, and you don’t have to, to run LOP, just be conservative and everything will be fine. I will eventually replace my probably tachometer with the EI CGI -30 as I have no space in my panel for anything, and I have a lot of experience with the EI folks, and their product support is second to none, not saying anything bad about anyone else, just applauding EI for their support.

The field wire also runs through the split master switch, and I believe the spade connectors are known for building up some corrosion and causing intermittent operation, usually results in pulsating voltage, but the spade connectors are an easy, free check, try wiggling them and see if it makes an effect

Alternators don’t usually come and go, they either work of don’t’, usually. Loose wires / corroded grounds etc. do often cause intermittent problems. I’d also be concerned with a battery who’s voltage dropped all the way down to 11V in only a few minutes with an 8 amp load though. 10.5V is DEAD and low 11 volt is very close to dead.

You don’t even need to do a “gami spread”, set the aircraft up at a normal cruise of 75% or less, then start leaning, if she will continue to run smooth well after there is a a noticeable power loss. I mean one that when you go back to rich will be very. very noticeable, then the engine is running smooth well lean of peak Try this run 22 squared, and lean to 7 GPH, that will be way LOP. but then go down to 6.5, which is so lean of peak I doubt anyone will run that lean If she is still relatively smooth way down at 6.5. you don’t need to do anything

Carbureted motors can of course be run LOP, just not all are smooth doing so. Some have found that a little carb heat helps in mixture distribution as another trick. What will irritate you is it may run smooth today LOP and not tomorrow, obviously something changed