mooney m20 oil analysis experience advice please

[pkofman]

Can anyone comment on this re: past experience

total engine time 1800

434 smoh

18 hours on oil

lead 3000+

iron 109

chromium 24

mag 19

phosphorus 1250

cu 15

Oil filter clean

are these numbers normal or within an acceptable range at 18HRS?

why would there be water...or is this normal condensation?

water ??? d4007 %v/v  .2

thoughts   . Peter

 

[Raptor05121]

Individual numbers are meant to be compared across a trend of 3-5 samples. That is where you should find flags.

The company that ran this should have broken down what each means and what their average is for that engine

[MB65E]

Iron is getting high. I had an engine at 80 PPM that needed a new camshaft. Normal would be below 50ppm. 

All others appear average. 

I noticed they didn't list Silicon. 

I would do another few runs at or around 15hrs with clean oil each time. 

-Matt

[carusoam]

18 hours isn't very many hours is it?

Water is an oddity in terms of it is always going to be present. Steam is a bi-product of combustion.  If you open the oil fill cap after a flight, you will see steam escaping.  If your plane sits for a while you will see water droplets form on the inside of the cap.

There is a thread where some Mooney pilots have posted their results.  You may want to find that thread...

Best regards,

-a-

[StevenL757]

Peter, agree with Alex here.  Can you share where you got these numbers (Blackstone, AvLabs, or other)?  Maybe scan or snap a pic of your results...you can white-out the personal stuff as you want.  Although I've only done oil analyses for the last 6 years' ownership of my plane at every 25-hour oil change (give or take an hour or two), your results should be self-explanatory, but if you can post your baseline report, we can help give some better context.

Regards, Steve

[Ratherbflying]

12 hours ago, MB65E said:

Iron is getting high. I had an engine at 80 PPM that needed a new camshaft.

Matt, can you talk a bit more about the sequence of events from high-iron-in-the-sample to new-camshaft?

Did metal start showing up in the filter? How long did it take between the high sample and the visible evidence?

Steve

[Bob_Belville]

2 hours ago, Ratherbflying said:

Matt, can you talk a bit more about the sequence of events from high-iron-in-the-sample to new-camshaft?

Did metal start showing up in the filter? How long did it take between the high sample and the visible evidence?

Steve

I had 2 cams with wear and no metal in filter. Would not have known w/o a prop strike tear down.

[jetdriven]

There's usually always metal in the filter, but you have to wash it, often, to see it.  As others say, a trend is not terribly useful with one data point. Several samples tell the story much clearer .

109 PPM on 18 hours is very high. Generally, when oil samples show over 100 PPM when normalized for 50hrs, something likely could be happening.

however, this applies to a regularly  flown engine. If it's sat 60 days three times in Houston, on the same oil change, and has been ground run only a few times as well, then 109 PPM is likely cylinder corrosion swept off and is not nearly alarming as cam and lifter failure.  The engine isn't being treated nicely but the damage is more tolerable and less expensive. 

Whats the run history on this engine?

Edited September 24, 2016 by jetdriven

[pkofman]

29 minutes ago, jetdriven said:

There's usually always metal in the filter, but you have to wash it, often, to see it.  As others say, a trend is not terribly useful with one data point. Several samples tell the story much clearer .

109 PPM on 18 hours is very high. Generally, when oil samples show over 100 PPM when normalized for 50hrs, something likely could be happening.

however, this applies to a regularly  flown engine. If it's sat 60 days three times in Houston, on the same oil change, and has been ground run only a few times as well, then 109 PPM is likely cylinder corrosion swept off and is not nearly alarming as cam and lifter failure.  The engine isn't being treated nicely but the damage is more tolerable and less expensive. 

Whats the run history on this engine?

I think the plane few very little over the past few years . maybe 15 to 20 /yr. which may explain some of this

what is really difficult to assess is if these issues and problems will turn into BIG $$$$ money problems imminently  or if they are just indicative of a normal ongoing process of wear and tear.  

The plane was majored 400 hrs ago and there is 18 hours on the oil. 

A compressions are pretty good in the range of  78/80 except 1 cylinder  that was 73 / 80

BTW someone asked about silicon , it was 29 and baseline new was 6 ( 18 hours on the oil )

and lastly to all ... thanks for the feedback

 

Pete

[ArtVandelay]

I had 2 cams with wear and no metal in filter. Would not have known w/o a prop strike tear down.

So there was no spalling?

[Oldguy]

I was fortunate enough to have my oil analysis done where prior owners had, so the plane I bought in 2013 has analysis numbers going back 10 years. It might be worth a try to contact the oil analysis company you didn't use to see if they have the plane on record. If so, you might try asking if they could send you the history or get them a sample to run and in the future use them for the analysis.

[Bob_Belville]

5 hours ago, teejayevans said:

So there was no spalling?

There was spallling but no metal detected in oil filter. We may have missed something but cutting the oil filter and Blackstone analysis provided no red flags. .

[Raptor05121]

What happens to an engine with spalling if you keep running it?

[jetdriven]

Sometimes is progresses very slowly and eventually the cam wears down to where it doest make rated power and it gets caught. But often it progresses at a moderate rate and involves more than one lobe or lifter, then enough metal circulates in the engine to score the cylinder, the crank, the oil pump, the governor, and the prop internals.  I flew a 182 once the prop governor failed and the engine overspeed. I landed at a grass field, the mechanic pull the governor and it was full of metal trash. 

[GeorgePerry]

Here's an oil analysis to compare too.  Values in (parenthesis) below the results are average values for a first run engine with between 560 and 750 engine hours and 30 - 60 hours on the oil samples