Just add oil.

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Foxhole

Pre-takeoff checklist
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Foxhole
I was watching a YouTube of a guy that did an outstanding job of getting a Yak 50 down after loosing oil pressure. That got me thinking about a senaro. You are flying along and everything is fine and you have a failure and loose oil pressure. A cracked case or jug or something. Usually the engine will run for a while before running out of oil and seizes up. Would it be of any real benefit if you had a way of adding more oil while in flight in order to buy you some more time to safely land. It would seem to me that a auxiliary oil tank could be added to put more oil in the crankcase. I'm thinking a small pump and a couple gallons of oil or possibly gravity feed the engine depending on where you could mount the tank. Has this ever been done? Is it unpractical or reasonable to think that this may help you? The voyager flew for 9 days nonstop how did Burt add oil? Granted on a certified AC you would need a bushel basket of paperwork to get an STC. I was more wondering about its usefulness if it was available to you?
 
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I'd rather have an extra 20-40lbs of useful load.

Some aircraft have external oil reservoirs, but not as a back up system.

My race bike with 1.3 quart oil capacity actually had about half of that contained inside the frame tubes.
 
Interesting concept, yours. However, my thought becomes that, if one were to "loose" oil pressure it would be key to tighten oil pressure. The latter doesn't make sense, and the former is misapplied. That said, if one were to lose oil pressure your solution would serve to regain said oil pressure; but there's a wide difference between loose and lose.
 
Lawreston said:
Interesting concept, yours. However, my thought becomes that, if one were to "loose" oil pressure it would be key to tighten oil pressure. The latter doesn't make sense, and the former is misapplied. That said, if one were to lose oil pressure your solution would serve to regain said oil pressure; but there's a wide difference between loose and lose.
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HA~ :confused:Good point. It seems that my smart phone spell check is smarter than me but not as smart as it should to be. :dunno:
 
I had an engine failure several years ago in a Garrett TPE-331-10 motor, in which I lost all engine oil. The engine itself continued to run like a top, with no other indications than the loss of pressure. In fact, the pressure indiction didn't go away right away, but the torque indication did.

The only sign at the time that I'd lost power was feel; temps and everything else indicated fine; a check of torque showed a torque loss, and that was owing to no more oil to actuate the propeller. Later, when discussing the matter with Garrett (Honeywell), we were told that the engine will run for a half hour with no oil. That doesn't do much good in flight, when there's no oil to make the propeller do what we want it to do. No torque available.

In large radial engines, we used a lot of oil. It was common when stopping working every three or four hours to put in twelve or fifteen gallons of oil per engine. Some airplanes were equipped to pump oil out to the engines in flight. We never did that, although we often carried 50 or 100 extra gallons of oil in drums in back. We used wobble pumps to put the oil in buckets, where we'd carry it up ladders (on the ground) during refueling, and pour it into large funnels in the oil tanks.
 
:eek:) The situation with the "checkers" software is that the words were correctly spelled, thus not flagged; only misapplied. (Sent from my iPad)

HR
 
Yes, oilers can be added. But they are typically used for ferry flights where otherwise acceptable oil consumption would starve the engine before reaching the destination.
 
Many times the loss of oil pressure is not caused by a lack of oil. it's caused by the lack of restriction to flow.
 
Foxhole said:
HA~ :confused:Good point. It seems that my smart phone spell check is smarter than me but not as smart as it should to be. :dunno:
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Spelled correctly, used incorrectly. :dunno:
What is needed is a grammar checker. :nono:
 
Tom-D said:
Many times the loss of oil pressure is not caused by a lack of oil. it's caused by the lack of restriction to flow.
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TMetzinger said:
You want to try parsing that sentence again?
Click to expand...

Tom is correct. Without restriction to the oil flow OP would drop starving the other areas of the engine and cause damage.

Adding additional oil in flight would be useless in this situation..... except to lube the belly of the plane. ;)
 
Huh. And WITH restriction to the oil flow then parts downstream of the restriction could be starved or receive insufficient flow.

Just depends on how you parse restriction, I guess.
 
TMetzinger said:
Huh. And WITH restriction to the oil flow then parts downstream of the restriction could be starved or receive insufficient flow.

Just depends on how you parse restriction, I guess.
Click to expand...

Take a garden hose and turn on the water. There is little to no pressure in the hose until you put your thumb over the hole and try to cut the flow off. The hose builds pressure to match the restriction caused by your thumb. In an engine, the bearings (as an example) cause the restriction from the crank journals to the bearings. Lose a bearing ( or lots of wear) the oil just squirts by the bearing causing low oil pressure and the oil does not make it other vital areas like the push rods.

It is about definitions I guess. Restriction does not mean restricted. :confused:
 
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Pressure is the resistance to flow, measured in pounds per square inch.

what is restricted has nothing to with the measurement. an open pressure regulator or a worn out old engine will offer no resistance to the flow created by the pump, thus no reading on the gauge.
 
A lot of screwing around and extra weight for something that hardly ever happens. You would be better off adding a couple gallons of gas.
 
Foxhole said:
I was watching a YouTube of a guy that did an outstanding job of getting a Yak 50 down after loosing oil pressure. That got me thinking about a senaro. You are flying along and everything is fine and you have a failure and loose oil pressure. A cracked case or jug or something. Usually the engine will run for a while before running out of oil and seizes up. Would it be of any real benefit if you had a way of adding more oil while in flight in order to buy you some more time to safely land. It would seem to me that a auxiliary oil tank could be added to put more oil in the crankcase. I'm thinking a small pump and a couple gallons of oil or possibly gravity feed the engine depending on where you could mount the tank. Has this ever been done? Is it unpractical or reasonable to think that this may help you? The voyager flew for 9 days nonstop how did Burt add oil? Granted on a certified AC you would need a bushel basket of paperwork to get an STC. I was more wondering about its usefulness if it was available to you?
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Actually, It's been done.
The DHC-2 has an oil fill in the cockpit, although I think it is done out of consideration for the pilot's comfort in the cold North where this thing usually lives, rather than for in flight safety.
http://www.flightsim.com/images/howtos/getreal3/DHC-2MK1Beaverpanel.jpg
Oil fill is the yellow port in the center bottom.
 
Geico266 said:
Take a garden hose and turn on the water. There is little to no pressure in the hose until you put your thumb over the hole and try to cut the flow off. The hose builds pressure to match the restriction caused by your thumb. In an engine, the bearings (as an example) cause the restriction from the crank journals to the bearings. Lose a bearing ( or lots of wear) the oil just squirts by the bearing causing low oil pressure and the oil does not make it other vital areas like the push rods.

It is about definitions I guess. Restriction does not mean restricted. :confused:
Click to expand...

Yep, if you have a garden hose with three tee fittings, each with a sprinkler head on it. Turn on the water and you get water out each head.

Now disconnect the first sprinkler head from the tee. Pressure at the spiket will fall and you won't get the water at the two down stream sprinklers you were.

The flow will be unchanged.
 
Reminds me of the Cessna that holds (held?) the aloft record. IIRC, they flew it until the engine had so many hours on it that the airplane would no longer climb away from the refuel operation. Obviously they regularly added oil inflight.

http://untoldvalor.blogspot.com/2008/07/plane-that-flew-for-62-days-and-t-bird.html

"On Dec. 4, 1958, a Cessna 172 took off from McCarran Field on a nonstop endurance flight. On Feb. 7, 1959, 64 days, 22 hours, 19 minutes and 5 seconds later, it landed in the Guinness Book of World Records. The nonstop flight record remains unbroken."

That is almost 1560 hours.
 
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Thanks for the comments. I have learned a few things and to summarize the consensus.

A. This is double
B. It has been done with success.
C. Not really practical or helpful for the average GA aircraft.
D. If I want to keep from getting blasted on this board. I need to work on my grammar and spell checking skills.
 
Foxhole said:
Thanks for the comments. I have learned a few things and to summarize the consensus.

A. This is double
B. It has been done with success.
C. Not really practical or helpful for the average GA aircraft.
D. If I want to keep from getting blasted on this board. I need to work on my grammar and spell checking skills.
Click to expand...

Take a good look at A. and D. above. You can't trust automatic spell check!

-Skip
 
Foxhole said:
Thanks for the comments. I have learned a few things and to summarize the consensus.

A. This is double
B. It has been done with success.
C. Not really practical or helpful for the average GA aircraft.
D. If I want to keep from getting blasted on this board. I need to work on my grammar and spell checking skills.
Click to expand...

Off to a good start.....

:p

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I777 using Tapatalk 2
 
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