Pre-oil O-470?

tfitch03

tfitch03

Pre-Flight
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tfitch03
Taking the 180 up this weekend after it has been sitting a couple months. Will turning the prop over a few times circulate any oil prior to startup as sort of a pre-oiler? Do these engines even need that for starting after long periods of rest? I don't want to do any damage unnecessarily if I can help it.
 
rotations are rotations. start it and get oil pressure as soon as possible.
 
Seems like my POH does reccomend this for the O470. It cant hurt
 
Stewartb said:
rotations are rotations. start it and get oil pressure as soon as possible.
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That, in after you don't get good pressure in short order ICO.
 
Thanks guys. I read the POH cover to cover last night and it does recommend pulling the propeller through several times prior to starting on a cold morning. it says "...to break loose or limber the oil..."
 
Would be better to preheat enough that the oil is warm, especially if it has been sitting for months. Maybe not so critical in Dallas
 
preheat recommended at or below -18c. That would be mighty cold down here.
 
Yes, I would look into some preheat also, depending on temps. If you don’t have a plug in type, set up an improvised system, just don’t burn the place down.
 
It will be above freezing but cold for us. I am going to take my propane heater and kerosene "jet" heater to see if I can get some warm air in the cowling for a while.
 
Continental says preheat below 20*. You're over thinking this. If the plane is well maintained a couple of months idle isn't a big deal. I park mine outside all winter and it fires right up in spring. I use storage oil but that's not important for your question.
 
Is it bad to overthink things in aviation, if we have the time? The plane is extremely well maintained and I am not worried about it starting right up. Just trying to further educate myself on situations I don't run into often.

Thanks for all the input.
 
tfitch03 said:
It will be above freezing but cold for us. I am going to take my propane heater and kerosene "jet" heater to see if I can get some warm air in the cowling for a while.
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A bit of warm air in the cowling for a while probably won't do any good unfortunately; it would take hours and hours for it to soak through into the engine where it would make a difference.

Of course, our engines are air cooled, so maybe they can also be air heated. Hmm.
 
Katamarino said:
A bit of warm air in the cowling for a while probably won't do any good unfortunately; it would take hours and hours for it to soak through into the engine where it would make a difference.

Of course, our engines are air cooled, so maybe they can also be air heated. Hmm.
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Yep, you got it. Hot air under the cowl will heat the cylinders first, with those cooling fins exposed to the warm air. Heating the oil will take considerably longer.

-Skip
 
Good discussion. What I am understanding is the only effective pre-heater is an actual system designed and installed to do just that. Everything else is just ****ing in the wind.
 
The comments about warm air heat are correct. It takes a lot of time to heat a 300# engine and the 9-10 quarts of oil inside with warm air. It'll work fine if you give it enough time. In 60* weather it doesn't matter. No preheat is necessary. Prime it, crank it, start it, fly it.
 
Drain the oil and put it in 1 gallon milk jugs. Store the oil inside the house. Pour into the engine right before starting.
 
Katamarino said:
A bit of warm air in the cowling for a while probably won't do any good unfortunately; it would take hours and hours for it to soak through into the engine where it would make a difference.

Of course, our engines are air cooled, so maybe they can also be air heated. Hmm.
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you obviously haven't seen the big FBO hot air preheaters that most northern united states airports have. Are they as good as an engine pre-heater? Probably not. But they damn well have no issues getting the engine warm enough to fire up in 10 minutes or less worth of heating. Before you do that you won't even be able to move the prop by hand. So the oil obviously is getting warmed.
 
tfitch03 said:
Taking the 180 up this weekend after it has been sitting a couple months. Will turning the prop over a few times circulate any oil prior to startup as sort of a pre-oiler? Do these engines even need that for starting after long periods of rest? I don't want to do any damage unnecessarily if I can help it.
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I suppose if you turned the prop enough....it might circulate some oil. Problem is it's not creating enough "splash" oil to lubricate the cylinder walls and cam/tappets....where most of the startup wear occurs.

If you really need to have oil circulated....take the top plugs out....and crank the engine for a few seconds...till you see oil pressure. This will be the next best thing to running the engine.

Although lubrication helps.....it is no substitution for pre-heating.

I'd not hesitate to give it a good pre-heat.....especially if the temps are anywhere near freezing. I'm not as concerned with warm oil as I am the temps in the cylinder head. Differences in coeff of thermal expansion affect the stackup tolerances between the aluminum piston and steel cylinder walls.....and if it's cold enough there could be interference or metal to metal contact before things get warmed up.
 
Turning the prop by hand is dumb. Whoever wrote that manual your reading about for the IO-470 didn’t know what he was talking about.
All you are doing is scrapping off the oil off the cylinder walls.

If your starting it immediately after pulling it though I doubt it will hurt anything but it’s not doing it any favors either.

The ones that make me laugh is the guy that doesn’t fly enough and goes to the airport to pull the engine though and leaves in order to “re-oil” the cylinders. All he did was scrape off the remaking oil off the cylinder walls.


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Aaronk25 said:
Turning the prop by hand is dumb. Whoever wrote that manual your reading about for the IO-470 didn’t know what he was talking about.
All you are doing is scrapping off the oil off the cylinder walls.

If your starting it immediately after pulling it though I doubt it will hurt anything but it’s not doing it any favors either.

The ones that make me laugh is the guy that doesn’t fly enough and goes to the airport to pull the engine though and leaves in order to “re-oil” the cylinders. All he did was scrape off the remaking oil off the cylinder walls.


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I agree that pulling through is not a good thing, especially if you have the option to preheat. However, if it's cold and you don't have preheat, rotating the engine a few times greatly increases your chances of actually starting the engine before the battery goes dead, particularly with straight weight oil. The ol' O-470 can wear out a Gill battery pretty quick. A Concorde battery helps tremendously.
 
OkieFlyer said:
I agree that pulling through is not a good thing, especially if you have the option to preheat. However, if it's cold and you don't have preheat, rotating the engine a few times greatly increases your chances of actually starting the engine before the battery goes dead, particularly with straight weight oil. The ol' O-470 can wear out a Gill battery pretty quick. A Concorde battery helps tremendously.
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I did not know that. Looking back I was preheated in my 182 days. Speaking of starting when cold, with reduced battery capacities, to bad when plugging in the engine it doesn’t also have a warm heated pad against the battery also powering a battery maintainer.

Kinda tough to start when the battery is at 1/2 capacity due to cold.


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