Installing repaired cylinder

[PeytonM]

Installing repaired #4 cylinder in my IO-360. Any practical suggestions beyond what’s in Lycoming SI1029D?

[A64Pilot]

Run it like you stole it for the first few hours

[bcg]

There's a break-in procedure in an SB. I don't know if it's different for the IO-360 but for my O-360 it was start it up and warm the oil then run for 15 minutes at 1500 RPM with someone outside looking for leaks. If it ran fine for the 15 minutes then go to full throttle for I think it was 30 seconds. Assuming that all went well then it said to cowl it up and fly it at 70% power for an hour, then vary between 60-60% for an hour and then full power.for 30 minutes. If I'm remembering correctly, it said to stay below 7500 or so. Mine ran HOT for the first 30 minutes or so of flight and then started working its way down. By the time the flight was done, it was within 40° of the other cylinders. I used 1 Qt of oil during the test flight.

I'm running Aeroshell 100 for the first 25 hours, then if oil consumption is stable I'll go back to Phillips XC.

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[A64Pilot]

What I would do is make the initial run with the oil that’s in the engine.

The majority of metal that’s going to be made is made rather quickly, so after the initial run I’d dump that oil and filter, then refill with mineral oil. I want that metal out, I don’t want it circulating around the engine if I can help it, plus I think there may be some value in inspecting the filter for metal before first flight, very unlikely with just a cylinder change, but why not inspect?

Personally I don’t break in with mineral oil, but most shops require it for warranty, and I don’t think it makes a whole lot of difference so I’m not necessarily against it either.

[BDPetersen]

Back in the day of dial-up internet the go-to aviation forum was Avsig. Maybe it still is, but I haven’t logged on in decades. Anyway, one of the regulars was an “expert” of sorts with technical knowledge of aircraft oil with connections to Phillips. His opinion was that Phillips X-C was fine for break-ins. His assertion was that the base oil had characteristics that made it comparable to mineral for break in, that it would keep junk in suspension, and that the viscosity range made it more immediately available to a cold engine.

Sorry I don’t recall his name and this is a pretty sketchy account, but it seemed reasonable. Personally, I used that information breaking in Continental cylinders on a Bonanza and a C310. That’s a lot of cylinders.

[Fly Boomer]

13 minutes ago, BDPetersen said:

Back in the day of dial-up internet the go-to aviation forum was Avsig. Maybe it still is, but I haven’t logged on in decades. Anyway, one of the regulars was an “expert” of sorts with technical knowledge of aircraft oil with connections to Phillips. His opinion was that Phillips X-C was fine for break-ins. His assertion was that the base oil had characteristics that made it comparable to mineral for break in, that it would keep junk in suspension, and that the viscosity range made it more immediately available to a cold engine.

Sorry I don’t recall his name and this is a pretty sketchy account, but it seemed reasonable. Personally, I used that information breaking in Continental cylinders on a Bonanza and a C310. That’s a lot of cylinders.

The heretic may have been Mike Busch:

https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2019/january/pilot/savvy-maintenance-breaking-good

 

[bcg]

I think the XC is fine also. Lycoming and J&J said to use mineral oil though, so I am. I figured no harm either way.

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[kortopates]

The heretic may have been Mike Busch:
https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2019/january/pilot/savvy-maintenance-breaking-good
 

Indeed it was, and Mike still endorses that. Although he prefers to use straight weight oil, such as Aeroshell 100, for break-in he sees no need to use an AD oil for break-in really any everyday oil as long as it doesn't have slippery additives like Camguard, or the Lycomimg ant-scuff additiove in Phillips Victory oil and Aershell Plus oils. The only oil Savvy recommends NOT using is the Aershell multi-weight because its 50% synthetic which doesn't do as well with lead and should be avoided till we're all running unleaded fuel.  (The Phillips muti-weight xctry oil is 100% mineral oil.)

[Fly Boomer]

5 minutes ago, kortopates said:

Indeed it was, and Mike still endorses that. Although he prefers to use straight weight oil, such as Aeroshell 100, for break-in he sees no need to use an AD oil for break-in really any everyday oil as long as it doesn't have slippery additives like Camguard, or the Lycomimg ant-scuff additiove in Phillips Victory oil and Aershell Plus oils. The only oil Savvy recommends using is the Aershell multi-weight because its 50% synthetic which doesn't do as well with lead and should be avoided till we're all running unleaded fuel.  (The Phillips muti-weight xctry oil is 100% mineral oil.)

Mike used multi-vis when he overhauled one of his engines and topped the other -- it's in the article linked above.

[kortopates]

5 minutes ago, Fly Boomer said:

Mike used multi-vis when he overhauled one of his engines and topped the other -- it's in the article linked above.

Indeed he did, but right before that line he says he has mostly used Aeroshell 100. The overhaul and top debacle happened away from home and Mike was doing the work in a Las Vegas hangar and was flying in to work on it - a lot of things where done a bit differently because of his plane being stranded away from home. The fact is, he would tell you its makes no difference with the caveats I mentioned as he does also in the article.

[PT20J]

How can it matter much? Lycoming requires AD oil for turbos during break in. Rings still seat just fine. But, if it’s on warranty, it’s probably best to follow the recommendations. Especially if it doesn’t matter. 

[A64Pilot]

12 hours ago, kortopates said:

Indeed he did, but right before that line he says he has mostly used Aeroshell 100. The overhaul and top debacle happened away from home and Mike was doing the work in a Las Vegas hangar and was flying in to work on it - a lot of things where done a bit differently because of his plane being stranded away from home. The fact is, he would tell you its makes no difference with the caveats I mentioned as he does also in the article.

I’ve seen in print where he uses AD oil for cylinder break-in even when not stranded away from home.

It’s one of the things I agree with him on, why use an obviously inferior oil? Just like the decades old argument of don't use Synthetic oil for x thousands of oil in cars because if you do the rings will never seat. I thought surely that nonsense would go away when GM started shipping high performance cars from the factory 30 years ago with Mobil-1 oil but it still persists to this day.

[N201MKTurbo]

Old wives' tales get to be old because they never go away.

[A64Pilot]

1 hour ago, N201MKTurbo said:

Old wives' tales get to be old because they never go away.

Some I’d even go out on a limb and say most have an origin in truth.

Just as there are a lot of new wives tales being created now, I won’t quote them as there are many converts that believe they are gospel and the argument isn’t worth it, just no point.

For example don’t run oversquared, while it’s as easy to see as flying a fixed prop airplane to see that’s not really true because as an example my little C-140 turns 2200 RPM static and if sea level pulls 29” manifold pressure, on takeoff at max power I’m hugely oversquare and high power is the worst case, but if you simply follow that rule you’ll never get into trouble. Sure it’s overly conservative but for a low time pilot simple rules are good, allows them to concentrate on aviating and not to try to be a flight Engineer.

Then later on in your flying career if you will as you gain experience and aren’t so overwhelmed then you can begin to learn more complex techniques that may or may not gain some additional benefits, but can help in the boredom of cross country flying. 

Like the oversquared thing for example, it was logical for several reasons that low RPM and higher MP would result in a fuel savings, it’s been 10 or 15 years ago but I flew a very accurately instrumented aircraft at some test points to see how much fuel I could save, I was on a save fuel kick largely just to see how much I could, bought Gami injectors, fine wire plugs etc. I stayed within the allowable ranges but long story short the difference in fuel burn as long as indicated A/S was identical was at most  .2 GPH and usually .1 GPH and that was an IO-540. So using todays fuel price of roughly $5 a gl the savings in $ is $1 an hour. Just not worth it, besides in order to run the low RPM the loss in power meant my cruise speed was less and I had to fly at lower altitudes to get the MP, so while on paper it seemed logical but in the airplane reality bumped into theory.

So I adopted the RPM that the engine felt the smoothest at, and gave up the rough low RPM and spent the extra .50c or so an hour for the smoother ride.

[Sabremech]

The #4 cylinder on Peyton’s Mooney jumped back on today. Will wrap up the installation early this week and then the break in process can be done. 

[A64Pilot]

I would ground run it as little as possible, just long enough to make sure it’s safe.

Take off and fly in the pattern at high power until your comfortable then head off, stay below 5,000 if possible so power stays high, run it RICH, control temps with forward airspeed, cowl flaps and mixture.

90% or better of break in occurs in the first flight.

Do NOT warm it up for more than a few minutes, a new cylinder is more likely to glaze than one broken in and cyl temps can get higher than you would expect on the ground. Once worn in they are far less likely to glaze, I think it’s ring friction is much higher initially and therefore cyl temp, cyl can get hot and the head not so much

Just don’t baby it until it’s broken in and you’ll be fine