Exhaust Valve color

[RVG8tor]

Well I finally picked up a cheap dental camera to take a look in my cylinders. I must have messed up the sensor face as I cut the cover off so that it had more room to move in the plug hole so excuse the picture quality. I watched Mike Bush's Webinars and was expecting a red color on my exhaust valve but this is what I found.

All four cylinders look the same, nice and uniform no signs of leak but should I be worried that mine are yellow instead of red? I don't know if this is some kind of issue with the camera and how it renders color. Using the cheap camera had made me want to buy one of better quality for sure.

Here is a picture of the intake valve, again all cylinders look about the same. I want to learn how to interpret these pictures so any help would be appreciated.

Cheers

 

[aerhed]

Looks fine except for all the lead.

 

[rocketbob]

Looks normal to me. Greenish-yellow sulfur deposits are normal to find on exhaust valves, and often it takes a wire wheel to remove them when reconditioning the valves.

 

[RV10inOz]

They are perfect like that.

TCM valves tend to have a red coloured deposit and I think it is but not entirely sure a function of the sodium filled stems in the Lycoming.

Good work!

 

[RVG8tor]

Lead

I too noticed the lead, I run LOP when on a trip but locally I am tooling around at a lower power setting and never seem to lean enough. I will try more LOP and see what they look like next time the cowl comes off. Thanks for the inputs.

Cheers

 

[RV10inOz]

Even tooling around I run LOP, there is no reason at all not to unless you are doing aerobatics or some kind of activity that requires rapid and often power changes.

If I am doing local scenics at below 3000, I am doing a BMP at 1000' while WOT and 2450 +/- 100, and setting about 60-80dF LOP. If I want to slow down any more from there pull back the MP a bit and the F/A ratio's stay the same. All the way to that hangar door!

Keeps the heads nicely clean.