On a quest for the elusive "Dry AeroVee"

[rizzz]

Oh man, what a mess. I've read about this happening several times on this forum and probably the yahoo groups before. Hopefully after your example people will either stop doing it or find a better way. Maybe someone with hundreds of hours of reliability that's different from this historically and predictably bad method will share their installation.

As karmarepair states, if you’re full flow filtering the oil, the “better way” is to use a Gene Berg full flow cover with built-in pressure relief valve.

http://www.mykitlog.com/users/display_l ... 350&row=14

The problem is that this requires drilling and tapping the case for the oil return which I doubt can be done on an assembled engine.

[Bryan Cotton]

Thanks guys, appreciate the info.

Today I had no real issues. One hour of flight and no big oil mess. I'll check the level when the airplane cools down. It's not dry though. It will never rust!

[Jgibson]

Bryan;
I've had problems before with Fram oil filters in high performance cars with high volume oil pumps. They are really poorly made. If you read the tests of filters, seems the K&N usually comes out on top. Thought for a while you had a radial in there, which my mentor referred to as using the 'external lube system'!
You're debugging your ship and will eventually have a great plane.....and a DRY one!

Joe

[Bryan Cotton]

Thanks Joe for the note.

I'll check the level when the airplane cools down.

So one hour of flight and my oil level is pretty much the same. Seems promising.

[karmarepair]

Another way to keep from blowing up your oil filter on startup: https://empius.com/products/oil-control-system-red-2/ This oil filter mount includes a relief valve.

And a previous poster mentioned full flowing an assembled case - you can do it if you're brave, and put lots of grease on the tap flutes to catch the chips.

There is also a special "dongle" that allows you to full flow a dual relief case without machining of any kind, but it disables the rear oil bypass http://empius.com/products/oil-return-adapter-kit-each/

[Bryan Cotton]

When I took my oil filter apart, it had a relief valve. Is this not sufficient? I guess you could say no, since my seal was blown out.

[bvolcko38]

Been there, done that.
Your oil lines need to be 8AN. Your oil filter needs to be Wix 5151R or equivalent. You need to tap your block for full flow return. I did it with engine installed on the Xenos. You need the Gene Berg oil pump cover with pressure relief valve built in.

[Bryan Cotton]

Running with no filter seems like a good option too. I'm sure any debris in the engine has been filtered out by now.

[GraemeSmith]

Running with no filter seems like a good option too. I'm sure any debris in the engine has been filtered out by now.

Going to respectfully completely disagree with that idea. Even the lowly oil screen will give you an idea if you are making metal at some point and possibly avert disaster.

[Bryan Cotton]

Going to respectfully completely disagree with that idea. Even the lowly oil screen will give you an idea if you are making metal at some point and possibly avert disaster.

Graeme,
Not sure I totally follow you. Where I was going was per the manual, with no turbo, the oil filter is not required. The lowly oil screen is indeed there.

What I was thinking of was when we built the engine, there was all sorts of crap in the galleys and per the assembly manual we had to clean it out. I'm thinking anything we missed is cleaned out by now, and caught in probably the first filter I had on the airplane.

I do like having the filter. I don't like the failure mode I just went through. Until I can put in a full flow oil system, eliminating the filter seems like it would eliminate a failure point.

I do understand your point of making metal. That is why people do oil analysis. But I think a lot of engines, airplanes and others, run without checking for making metal. It's a risk but probably a low one.