Looking for someone with Continental TSIO-360 break in experience (1986 252)

[Bob R.]

My plane is at SWTA having a new engine installed. Unsure as to exact completion date. Expected to be within the next couple weeks. I'm looking for someone with break in experience who would fly with me during the initial 3-4 hours. The airplane is at Smithville Crawford/84R airport. This is a zero time reman engine. TSIO-360-MB2B.

Edited January 21 by Bob R.

[201Steve]

There’s no magic to it. I know it gets a lot of banter, but following the instructions is pretty straight forward. Run it hard and run it per the break in procedures by the overhauling entity (as they are the ones you’d be dealing with if there were any warranty issues to contend with). 

[KSMooniac]

If you don't find someone, I'd encourage you to head over to beechtalk.com and search the Engine Talk forum about break-in procedures, especially articles/posts written by or referencing the Advanced Pilot Seminar protocols, Pelican's Perch (John Deakin), GAMI, George Braly, Walter Atkinson, etc.  

In a nutshell, you want to maximize internal cylinder mean pressures (not peak!) and minimize CHT.  Ideal is high power AND lean of peak.  If you're not a LOP operator, then stay very ROP to keep the CHT's down until the rings are set and CHT drops.  Hopefully you have a good engine monitor.  Once you're satisfied everything is working and you can venture away from the airport, then fly as much as you can at high power and don't do pattern work, extended taxi/ground time, etc.  Since you have a turbo, you can do the break-in at higher altitude than those of us without... my last break-in flights consisted of a triangular orbit between 3 rural airports in my region at low altitude to keep my power up.

[PeteMc]

You should be getting instructions from the SWAT and/or Continental.  And as @201Steve said, it's pretty straight forward.

Looks like you're down low vs up in the mountains which is good.  My initial flights were right above the Airport, just in case.  Then my mechanic had me flying low along the coast.  Basically as low as I was willing to go with a new engine.  I know there were specifics about cylinder temps, etc., but again, it was pretty straight forward.  

 

[pkellercfii]

Went through this with the TSIO-360-MB which powers my 252 about 15 years ago. That was a field rebuild by Western Skyways, which included new Continental cylinders. Have to agree with the advice to follow the manufacturer's recommendation/requirements(?) for break in. One exception: Fuel and induction system adjustments prior to the first flight. Given that the TSIO-360-MB is a Continental engine with Continental's continuous flow fuel injection system, the engine fuel & induction systems most likely won't be adjusted properly for your aircraft right out of the box. Continental probably recommends adjusting everything to their specs before flying it. Putting a lot of lower power ground run time on any new, newly overhauled, remanned or rebuilt engine isn't a very good idea. My then-IA and I had an interesting discussion about how much ground adjustment to do prior to the first flight. The compromise we arrived at was to do just a few ground runs just to get the takeoff fuel flow at or above service manual specs. We simply worked  from the Mooney OEM Hoskins fuel flow gauge without connecting any test equipment. That worked very, very well. A point made my then-IA, which was very correct, is that for the first few flights, a lot of things are going to change as the piston rings seat themselves. As a result, spending a lot of time, and ground run time, adjusting the engine prior to the first flight is probably mostly a waste of time at best, and possibly detrimental to proper break in at worst. My hangar elf was mighty busy making an adjustment or two after every one of my first few flights after the rebuild.  Ihad the rings very well seated after about 10 hours flying time, and at that point dumped the break in mineral oil and changed to standard AD oil after those 10 hours were completed. I also changed & cut the oil filter at that point and found just a single fleck of what looked like aluminum in the filter media. It looked like the CHTs and engine oil temperature had largely stabilized after about 2-3 hours flying time.

For the break flights themselves, I used a power setting of 28"/2500 RPM with the mixture full rich for the first two or three flights and 2-3 hours. As delivered, the engine had a problem with the idle fuel pressure being set too low. That resulted in the engine running lean at part throttle, so that the full rich mixture at 28"/2500 RPM only gave 40-50F ROP. 28"/2500 RPM ROP is just under 75% power for the TSIO-360-MB. The GAMI GAMInjector flight manual supplement suggests 125 F or more ROP for 70-75% power. That's probably good advice, given that the GAMI flight manual supplement is good advice for operating any piston AC engine, with or without GAMInjectors. After the first 2-3 hours, I varied the power setting between 65-75% power for the next seven or eight hours. That was IAW Western Skyways' recommendations. Your instructions from Continental might be different. Suggest reading what they give you carefully.

--Paul Keller