I am been fighting high oil consumption since my first flight. I will try to quickly lay out the situation in the hopes someone out there has a suggestion.
I rebuilt my IO540 C4B5 with the help of a local A&P shop - it has 125 hours on it when I rebuilt it - it had been involved in an aircraft fire but the engine was not directly involved but since we were concerned about corrosion we took it down and rebuilt it with new bearing, hardware and gaskets. It has been functioning well in all regards for 260 hours since except I have had to replace 1 quart of oil every 4-5 hours. I added a slime fighter to the breather and it appears to have had some effect reducing consumption from .22 to .18 quarters an hour.
I run it at 7 qts and I refill when it hits the 6 line.
I have oil under the cowl it seems to be mostly on the left rear side and I also see oil drip from the breather.
The oil does turn dark but not right after an oil change.
I have checked the exhausts and they don't seem very oily.
I spoke with Antisplat about there system and they suggested I apply 5 PSI of air to the crank to look for an oil leak using the soapy water trick. I found a couple of very small leaks - one around the cover plate for the missing MAG - light speed instead. But flying since I fixed this I am still getting the same mess under the cowl and on the belly.
I have looked at most the oil leak type posts on the forum and tried many of the ideas I found including the foot powder - ground run trick but didn't see any leaks.
Any suggestions for the next step?
Thanks
I rebuilt my IO540 C4B5 with the help of a local A&P shop - it has 125 hours on it when I rebuilt it - it had been involved in an aircraft fire but the engine was not directly involved but since we were concerned about corrosion we took it down and rebuilt it with new bearing, hardware and gaskets. It has been functioning well in all regards for 260 hours since except I have had to replace 1 quart of oil every 4-5 hours. I added a slime fighter to the breather and it appears to have had some effect reducing consumption from .22 to .18 quarters an hour.
I run it at 7 qts and I refill when it hits the 6 line.
I have oil under the cowl it seems to be mostly on the left rear side and I also see oil drip from the breather.
The oil does turn dark but not right after an oil change.
I have checked the exhausts and they don't seem very oily.
I spoke with Antisplat about there system and they suggested I apply 5 PSI of air to the crank to look for an oil leak using the soapy water trick. I found a couple of very small leaks - one around the cover plate for the missing MAG - light speed instead. But flying since I fixed this I am still getting the same mess under the cowl and on the belly.
I have looked at most the oil leak type posts on the forum and tried many of the ideas I found including the foot powder - ground run trick but didn't see any leaks.
Any suggestions for the next step?
Thanks