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View Poll Results: Oil is all over your engine and inside cowl. What do you do?
Put cowl on and fly 17.5 NM home? 2 3.08%
Clean up mess and do a run-up with cowl off? 41 63.08%
Tie down aircraft for the night and investigate the next day? 17 26.15%
Find A&P to investigate on a Sunday Evening or on the next day? 6 9.23%
Multiple Choice Poll. Voters: 65. You may not vote on this poll

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  #1  
Old 09-04-2015, 09:56 PM
RV6_flyer's Avatar
RV6_flyer RV6_flyer is offline
 
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: NC25
Posts: 3,507
Default Oil on engine and inside cowl

As of right now, 91% of the responders of the oil puddle poll would pull the cowl and investigate. So the cowl is pulled and you find oil inside the cowl and what appears to be a crack in the paint on the through stud boss in front of the #2 cylinder. The stud is one of the 4 larger studs that hold the #1 cylinder to the engine and is right below the oil galley.
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NC25 RV-6
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Where is N157GS
Building RV-8 S/N: 80012

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  #2  
Old 09-04-2015, 11:16 PM
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flyboykelly flyboykelly is offline
 
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Location: Port Orange, FL (7FL6)
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Still normal for me
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  #3  
Old 09-05-2015, 06:32 AM
brooksrv6 brooksrv6 is offline
 
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Location: Port Orange, FL
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Actually had this happen with a rental plane of my employer. Renter left it 90 miles away because of oil in the cowl. The crankshaft seal was then replaced. I went to pick it up and found a crack in front of the #2 cylinder that leaked oil while running. I left it there and had the engine removed.

Chris
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  #4  
Old 09-05-2015, 06:59 AM
jabarr jabarr is offline
 
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Location: Fayetteville, Georgia
Posts: 215
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Hope you're not seriously considering flying with a major oil leak. Fix it now!! Please don't become a statistic!
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  #5  
Old 09-05-2015, 07:16 AM
David-aviator David-aviator is offline
 
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Location: Chesterfield, Missouri
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Me thinks Gary is bored in retirement and has created an Oil Leak 101 course.

Time to think about building another airplane Gary, like the 8. That will light your fire more than this effort.

You pushed the envelope just a little to far with the 6 engine, nothing lasts forever not even a Lycomiing engine. Metal wears out.
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  #6  
Old 09-05-2015, 08:28 AM
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RV8Squaz RV8Squaz is offline
 
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Location: Senoia, Georgia
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Quote:
Originally Posted by RV6_flyer View Post
As of right now, 91% of the responders of the oil puddle poll would pull the cowl and investigate. So the cowl is pulled and you find oil inside the cowl and what appears to be a crack in the paint on the through stud boss in front of the #2 cylinder. The stud is one of the 4 larger studs that hold the #1 cylinder to the engine and is right below the oil galley.

If indeed you have a cracked case, you are grounded, period, end of story. Engine removal, repair, and replacement is the only answer.

I once found a "small" crack on my number 3 cylinder during a routine compression check. The cylinder wouldn't hold any air; my compression was 10/80! The air leak was sufficient to blow what's left of my hair! How this engine ran without a noticeable power loss, I don't know! There was a small crack in the "paint" next to the top spark plug hole.

In any case, jabarr and I removed the cylinder and it was determined that this crack went halfway around the circumference of the cylinder. No one knows how long it would have continued to run, 10 hours, 1 hour, 10 minutes?

Clean the engine, run it, and look. Blowing talc on a clean engine and then running it to highlight a leak is a neat trick I recently learned.

Jerry Esquenazi
RV-8 N84JE

Last edited by RV8Squaz : 09-05-2015 at 08:55 AM.
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  #7  
Old 09-05-2015, 11:45 PM
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RV6_flyer RV6_flyer is offline
 
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Default Here is the story.

Cowl was pulled to check after landing. Mess cleaned up and a run up accomplished. (Sunday)

This is what it looked like after the ground run-up.


The oil at the bottom of the stud / boss was not there before the run-up and there was more oil on the baffle. The suspected crack can be seen in the paint running up from the stud on the boss.

The airplane had the cowl put back on and was tied down for the night. I got ground transportation home.

Since I am an A&P and did not like what I saw, I asked another A&P (Retired US Airway), multi-RV builder, and all around great guy to look over what I saw the next day and give me his opinion.

The next day, we pulled the cowl and use a wire wheel on a drill to clean paint from the area. (Monday) This is what we found:



The gold color stuff is oil. Engine was cold and ran less than one minute.

I did not ask if the airplane should or should not be flown. I would not fly it in that condition.

This is what happened on Tuesday:



Thursday the airplane looked like this:



Saturday, this photo was taken in Mississippi:



It is now Sunday and I am home with the truck and replacement engine.

Some work still needs to be done. I bet someone finds something else wrong in at least one of the photos.
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Gary A. Sobek
NC25 RV-6
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Where is N157GS
Building RV-8 S/N: 80012

To most people, the sky is the limit.
To those who love aviation, the sky is home.
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  #8  
Old 09-06-2015, 12:50 AM
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skylor skylor is offline
 
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Location: Southern California
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Quote:
Originally Posted by RV6_flyer View Post
I bet someone finds something else wrong in at least one of the photos.
Purple?!?!

JK!

Skylor
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  #9  
Old 09-06-2015, 09:30 AM
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Ironflight Ironflight is offline
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Location: Dayton, NV
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Nothing at all wrong with Purple! Tsam has lots of it.....good DNA Condor!
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  #10  
Old 09-06-2015, 09:34 AM
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AlexPeterson AlexPeterson is offline
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by RV6_flyer View Post
I bet someone finds something else wrong in at least one of the photos.
#2 pipe dark brown?
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