Mid Time Engine IRAN

[Kyle Boatright]

With my engine approaching 900 hours, I'm taking an opportunity to give it a good once over so I can identify and correct any problems. Your basic Inspect and Repair As Necessary (IRAN). Among other things, I'm removing the baffles to allow better access and to allow me to really clean up the engine.

While I'm doing this, is it a good time to re-torque the cylinder base nuts? A couple of the nuts on the through studs show oil seeps, and maybe tightening those nuts would help a bit. Other than following Lycoming's latest procedure on torqueing cylinder base nuts (presumably using the procedure for replacing a cylinder), are there any do's and don'ts in this area?

While I've got the baffles off, are there any other items that are particularly worthy of attention?

Oh, and one more question. When I initially sealed the baffle to engine gaps, I used orange RTV. Dumb, dumb, dumb. And ugly. Shoulda used black. Any suggestions for removing all of that orange RTV ( which is holding on very well, by the way)so I can replace it with the black stuff?

[Aryana]

Polygone will take it right off. I used this stuff to remove proseal out of the fuel tank area of my Aeronca Sedan.

http://rpm-technology.com/Poly-Gone.htm

It's magical...check out some of the photos: http://rpm-technology.com/LabNotes/LabNotes_Removal.htm

[Kyle Boatright]

As it turns out, lacquer thinner softens the RTV remnants once you have scraped most of it off, and a razor and stainless brush remove the rest of it, leaving a few areas that need a little touch-up paint.

As far as the rest of the IRAN went: I found one baffle bracket where a screw had buggered up a reinforcement, so I remade the reinforcement. "While I was in there" I pulled all of the baffles (including the inter-cylinder baffles), cleaned them, pulled the oil return lines, checked the torque on the cylinder base nuts, removed all of the orange RTV I'd used to seal air leaks, and wiped down everything I could get rag on. Removing the baffles required me to remove the oil cooler too, so I have that to reinstall.

But after flying for 12.5 years, I really like that I took the opportunity to do a deeper cleaning and inspection than is typical for a condition inspection. I also like that I only found one minor issue.