Your Engine's Lifeblood

There's a lot more to piston engine oil than you might think. The lubrication requirements of slow-turning direct-drive Continentals and Lycomings are quite modest, but aircraft engine oil needs to do lots more than lubricate. We also depend on it to clean, cool, seal, and protect against corrosion. It takes a complex package of additives to do all this. In this webinar, Mike Busch offers a guided tour of the complexities of aircraft engine oil, and offers recommendations on selecting the best oil for your engine.

[davidmangold]

Mike, I’ve watched hours of your tutorials. You explain things so succinctly. I’ve learned so much from you. Dave, 55 years flying and 28, 000 hours in my logbook. I’m impressed with your knowledge!

[flybobbie]

Our leaser insisted we used multi grade oil in a Warrior. It always ran hot and the oil is like water when hot, i think so thin it passes to quick throiugh the cooler. Also oil burn on a new engine was bad, at least a quart every 10 hours. Good new engine i have seen one needing 3 quarts in 50 hours. Starting to get expensive to operate.
I stared dropping in 100w and that would reduce the burn.
We just changed to TotalD80 from Shell w80 on a Tomahawk, that is now burning oil. So just dropped in Shell w100. In 5 hours the oil consumption has dropped to 1mm in 5 hours. Will be Shell in future.

[alexanderwilliams-hoffman]

Great video! Thanks for the information.

[mannypuerta]

Note that there is an MT Propeller Service Bulletin (SB36R3) prohibiting the use of AeroShell 15W50. Phillips 20W50 is an approved oil.

[dnthhuw]

Thank you for video!!! We will study in order to understand more about that than we fly. Maxim, Russia, PA-32R300

[JMOUC]

Outstanding, interesting, informative, and very clear presentation. Thanks, Mike!

[travisminneapolis]

Interesting explanation as to why oil changes at higher frequency is actually quite beneficial.

[greenman]

Love your videos very informative. Maybe I’m just crazy but a more accurate description of oil would be dead zooplankton and phytoplankton

[fransandwell]

Lots of great expert information, Many thanks.

[martinda]

Really enjoyed listening. Thanks guys, brilliant presentation.

[piperc]

Very interesting and great information. Thank you

[hawk]

I would like to suggest if you use an additive for an aircraft engine, you might want to try using fr3. Gale Banks even suggests that a few ounces go into differentials. He claims it reduces parasitic horsepower loss. And would subsequently probably lower temperatures by a few degrees as well as increased lifespan of those contact surfaces. It is a ceramic rather than PTFE

[regza]

Nice to see aviation connecting to Tribology. However, a little comment: The explanation on the synthetic oils falls short in the scientific background: Synthetic engine oils can be composed of base oils (group III oils and group IV) with very different chemistry. Each base oil needs a specific additive package that is tailored to the engine (swelling of seals can be a problem too) and the fuel that is used in the engine. For aviation piston engines the market is probably to small to develop an optimal additive package that would lead to the best performance with synthetic base oil but in principle it would be possible.

[Trump]

Interesting about lead sludge we have never seen this in race cars running 118 oct gas with much higher lead content than 100ll and synthetic oil I wonder if it’s because there’s no detergent in aircraft oil. Because this problem is unheard in hi performance boats and cars ect running higher lead levels than avgas with both ester based and PAO based synthetic oil

[walterschroeder]

What's your opinion on running lean of peak and gammy injectors

[ele]

I have a Lycoming O-360 running on Chrome Cylinders. The new piston rings are broken in and I would like to run synthetic oil on it from now on. I have been running shell 100 mineral SMOH and wonder if it would be OK to use PHILLIPS 66 VICTORY AVIATION OIL 20W-50 on it. Is is OK to start filling up when the oil level goes down with the "new" oil Philips? in other words, mixing the "old" oil the new one? I've heard is not a good idea to mix oils... or is that OK?

[rainerzufall]

Great information but hard to follow. I set the video to 2x speed and that made it a lot better but it sounds weird. It would be better to speak faster and more continuous.

[tomasnokechtesledger]

Mobil 1 Aviation oil was marketed as a 200 hour oil change intervals... go figure.

[Jeff]

Great informative vid. Is cam guard necessary when using W100 PLUS? Isn’t the PLUS the same as Camguard?

[marknielsen]

DAMN this was good! Had to toss a whole library for long held beliefs taught and imagined.