Hello All,

I have followed BCP the site since joining in 2009 and have enjoyed the threads. I was over at Johnson Creek last summer right before what I believe was your annual fly-in. I have been posting updates on our progress on the http://www.maulepilots.org website and thought there may be some here that might be interested in our project. There are 17 entries in the archive and there will be much more to come. We hope to be finished by March. Any input is surely appreciated. Here is the link to the blog: http://web.me.com/rhysspoor/Site_2/Blog/Blog.html

IF,

Thanks for sharing the blog, read it tonight start to finish. I love following airplane projects that start from scratch and address every minute detail- very cool. Good luck (seriously) on having it complete by March..if that happens Tim should be immortilized!!

My ignoble input:
a. Your new choice of oil/additive is spot-on!
b. A few of the supposed oil experts I've reaserched say that oil needs to reach 180 degrees for 30 minutes to burn off all the moisture/contaminates. Ideally, this would happen in frequencies not exceeding 2 or 3 weeks. I would figure out a way to ensure this in your short flight regimen...may help with the corrosion??
c. Re-using pistons after 1500 hrs.???? I would have thought it make sense to replace them with new even if the old ones meet spec. They aren't too expensive considering. It would be interesting to hear what Tim thinks on the topic...he seems to be a guru of sorts.
d. Your paint scheme looks sweet, good choices all the way around. I would go with the brightest Yellow you can find..like the RV guys do. Some of them glow in the day!
e. Your aircraft project blog is focused and succinct. Thanks for not weaving in "whats wrong with America, how the guy on the phone's customer service sucked, how we should all live our lives" and everything else that ruins an otherwise interesting project blog...makes for better reading too.

Keep the updates coming, Ive got it bookmarked-

Hello SixTwoLeemer,

Thanks for your input, I appreciate it. Tim is really experienced and intuitive about the plane, if everything goes right we actually might make the March date, but better to do it right than fast. Things that tend to foul things up are parts delivery times.

There is a little more to the story about the engine than the blog speaks to. Around 1000 hours, before I purchased the plane, during one of the oil changes a piece of aluminum was found in the oil strainer. That led to a total engine disassembly and replacement of all of the pistons and rings. The aluminum came from one of the skirts on one of the pistons. In addition, all of the bearings and the camshaft were replaced. The cam had some pit corrosion. Everything spec'd out within limits. There was never a clear consensus as to why the piston failed (a theory was a manufacturing defect but Lycoming evidently didn't agree), but what was clear is that this engine has always been challenged by corrosion. Up until that point the engine had been using Aeroshell 100. They decided at that point to go to the Aeroshell 15W-50 (I assume for the anti-corrosion properties).

Now we are at about 1500 hours and I tend to fly between 100-125 per year. The compressions have been good (Tim did alert me to how compression tests could be done to make the numbers look better, which I didn't know) and the oil burn steady and in the range of about a quart every 12-15 hours. As I am happy to see agreement, we are switching to Phillips 20W-50 and getting the anti-corrosion with Cam Guard. Overall cost per oil change is similar to the Aeroshell 15W-50. The idea is to fight harder against the engine rusting away. I am in the Pacific NW and it's moist here. I'll start flying the plane differently (more and longer, oh darn ) I also have been pulling the dipstick up after shutdown and it is amazing to see the amount of steam that comes up out of the oil fill tube. Everything we could see and we looked closely, inside of the engine looked excellent except those valve springs and valve covers, which we replaced.

The major reason for trying to do this whole thing as economically as possible and that is the Av gas cloud on the horizon. I have been following the discussions, since it looks like 100LL will disappear in the not too distant future this engine is going to need some other fuel alternative. If there is a drop in replacement for it, then this engine (Lycoming IO-540) will be with the plane until it's last days. If not, then the O-540 could be an option but heavier. The present combination however is a very well performing plane (I'm partial). TBO is 2000 hours but since I fly Part 91 as long as the compression, oil burn and oil analysis stay good, it should be safe and may continue on until the fuel issue is resolved or not.

This engine has a combination of some new and some old. It has been running well and the oil analysis (which has been done every oil change for years) is all WNL. It certainly isn't going to wear away but it could rust away. I think we have a reasonable plan to reduce the corrosion, so there was my rationale for the choice.

Thanks again for the input.