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Lycoming cylinders

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Posted

I bought this Lycoming IO-360 earlier this year from a guy in Canada. It only had 137 hours Since Overhauled, but had been sitting for a few years. The logbook showed that it had been pickled, and at the time of pickling the mechanic had noticed slight corrosion in the cylinders.

So, I was really rolling the dice, and I have lost some sleep over what the cylinders would actually look like! However, I took it apart yesterday and it looks great! The corrosion was really difficult to find! It basically consists of just a few small pinholes on one side of each cylinder. The Pistons have a little corrosion on the top of them, but I havent cleaned them off completely yet to see the amount of corrosion.

I'm going to have the cylinders honed and then put new rings on the Pistons. I have ordered all of the seals and gaskets and I'm hoping that will get her ready to go. I sure am glad this tipped in my favor, it could have been costly!

These engines really are simple...Damn the lawyers for making these things so expensive!

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Posted

Cams and lifters are most often damaged by rust - check it close and prelube with some STP.

EDMO

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Posted

WooWee! I got my Cylinders back and man they did an awesome job! They anodized the head of the cylinder, painted the base black, honed the inside of the cylinders, reseated the valves, cleaned the valves and Pistons, put new rings on and positioned everything so all I do is install the piston pin and base nuts and it's good to go! They even threw in all the gaskets!

If you are looking for cylinder work for Lyc's or Cont's ACE Cylinders in Greely, Colorado is the place to go. Ask for Joe.

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Posted

Sticking with the Bee theme throughout! I sure love those refurbished cylinders. Those guys really hooked me up...they even put the Pistons and rings in the cylinders so all I had to do was pull the pistons out a bit and push the piston pins in. Easy!

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Posted

You are doing such an amazing Job Ron! This is going to be a one of a kind Magnum for sure. Thank you so much for sharing your progress!!

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Posted

Thanks Joey! Can't wait to fly it and meet you at a back country airstrip! After I scrounge up my left over pennies of course!

Thanks,

Ron

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Posted

I can't even imagine how your Magnum is going to perform on 180HP! Mine was beyond amazing with just 150!

I can think of one problem you may encounter because I had it with my 150 HP engine. I usually found myself flying very comfortably at around 100MPH. Sure the plane could go MUCH faster, but 100 was a very sweet spot for fuel consumption (around 5gph) and just felt nice and comfortable. When bumping the speed up a lot and burning 7 or more GPH, the plane was not as smooth as at 100. I don't mean vibration smooth. The engine and prop on my Magnum were butter. I mean air beating on the fuselage and the high lift wing responding to every little variation in the air. The Magnum does not feel like a 172 at 100 knots! It's not bad, but is not as smooth.

 

The issue was that it only takes a fraction of the available horespower to drive at 100 MPH. My oil would never even get warm, and that was with me plugging off the oil cooler air flow with a tennis ball! It would only get up to normal operatiing temp on the hottest days in the summer. i never did figure out exactly what to do. I was planning to build some baffling to partially block the cheek holes, and had just bought a four cylinder digital CHT so i could monitor CHT while designing the flow restriction baffling, but never got around to it before wrecking the Magnum. Now that effort has to wait until I get it back in the air.

 

Just advising you to expect that issue and plan ahead for it. I think installing CHT on all four cylinders is the best place to start. That way you can keep an eye on the very critical CHT parameter of these engines while still allowing you to mess with methods of airflow restriction to keep the oil temp warm enough to boil off condensate that developes.

 

Chris

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Posted

Fly it???!

I've been thinking you were building a show plane... :drool3:

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Posted

Yeah that is another problem Ron is going to have!....His plane is going to be so nice he won't be able to bring himself to fly it!

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Posted

Chris,

The other plane I have now is under powered because of the high field elevations around here, between 5000' MSL and 8000' MSL, so I wanted to make sure I had all the power possible for climbing around here!

Thanks for the cruise and CHT info. That's cool with me, low and slow is right up my alley!

I haven't even pondered the oil cooler yet, but now I will definitely come up with a door to adjust airflow on it.

What prop were you using on yours?

KFfan,

No show plane here...Just too much time on my hands! Flying does seem far off! The last 10% is 90% of the work!

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Posted

Ron I was first using a wood sensenich "cruise" prop and switched to using a big CATO climb prop. Highly recommended by me! You are going to want the one they build for the 180 HP Carbon Cub. He sold me a Carbon Cub prototype for a great price. It was one that ended up too flat for the 180 HP engine on the CC, but was PERFECT on mine. I think it was 78-80 inches in diameter. Can't remember now. Unfortunately it's a lot shorter now! :-(

 

And don't worry about cruise Ron, your plane will go as fast as you will want to go! I was just saying I found it very sweet in the 90-110 MPH range and I suspect unless you are made of money to push that billboard through the air, you will also like that speed range. What is really cool is you will be able to back way down to an idle, lean the crap out of it and float around at 75 MPH in the 4GPH range!

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Posted (edited)

ChrisB,

     I was really surprised that you didn't say to put a big 3-blade Whirlwind prop on that big engine!

EDMO

Edited by Ed In Missouri

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