First Oil Change

Today was the day I needed to perform the first oil change on the plane. Since it’s a new engine, Lycoming recommends an early oil change at 25 hours rather than the usual 50 hour interval. This was seriously the first time I’ve ever changed the oil in a car or a plane, so it was a new experience for sure. I spent a good amount of time researching the recommendations on what needs to be done. I also spent some time checking on other things I should inspect at the same time.

To start, I took the plane for a short flight to get the oil up to operating temperature. This will boil off the water in the engine (if any) and lower the viscosity of the oil to enable it to drain easier. During the flight I noticed the right EFIS was not showing the sectional and airport approach plates like it should. A later investigation revealed that my USB extension cable I was using to make it easier to swap the flash drive with the charts wasn’t working. The primary EFIS extension was working ok, so it’s clear this extension needs to be replaced.

Back at the airport, I removed the engine cowling. When I first built the plane I didn’t add a quick drain plug to the oil sump, so for this change I had to deal with the stock engine “plug”. So I placed a large Home Depot bucket under the engine and removed the oil plug. It had quite the splatter range so I had to lift the bucket to catch all the oil. If I had thought to turn the nose gear out of the way it probably wouldn’t have been that big of a deal.

After the sump was drained, I installed the Van’s Quick drain valve, which is really just a Saf-Air drain. Once wrenched into place, I safety wired it to the sump case to prevent it from coming undone.

Next up was the oil filter. I’ve heard this can be quite messy as when you spin off the filter the oil drips onto everything behind the engine. So I trick I learned was to take a long piece of cardboard (from a box that was unfolded) and use it as a funnel from under the filter to the oil drip bucket. So I unscrewed the oil filter some so that it could drain and sure enough it flowed right down the funnel and didn’t leave a drop in the engine area!

Once the run off was done, I removed the filter entirely and set it aside for internal inspection. I opened up the filter and didn’t see anything visually, so I rinsed it and shook it up and strained the liquid. There was no sign of any metal so that was a good sign. I lubed up a new oil filter and torqued it into place on the engine.

Next I turned to the oil suction filter screen at the bottom rear of the engine. It is designed to capture large material before it gets to the filter. I removed the plug and inspected the finger sleeve filter. There were one or two small pieces of aluminum – nothing ferrous, so I’m not worried. I used a new crush gasket and reinstalled per Lycoming torque guidelines (135 degree past contact).

I then safety wired the new oil filter as well as the oil suction cap into place.

While the cowl was off I also gave everything a good once-over. I added some more RTV to help seal the upper air plenum for cooling as there were some places I could only get to underneath the cylinders.

I also checked the alternator belt tension. Since it was installed as a new belt, it’s best to check after it’s been used to ensure it is still with-in the proper torque. So using my torque wrench I found that the belt slipped at 10Nm which comes out to 7.3 Ft/Lbs  – within the 7-9 range recommended by Lycoming.

I also trimmed down the front air-dam baffles in front of Cylinders 1 and 2 to help lower their temperature. Everything is now within about 20 degrees of one another. The center 3 and 4 cylinders are the coolest, 1 and 2 are about 10 degrees hotter and 5 and 6 are 20 hotter than the coolest. So it’s coming together pretty good so far. Lots of little tweaks add up.

My new fancy oil can cutter I got from ACS did crack it’s blade on the first use so I am going to contact them about getting a replacement blade as it shouldn’t have happened that soon.

After everything got a once over, I taxi’d out and gave it a good run up to and did an inspection for oil leaks – none. Success!

Since I had the cowl off, I wanted to adjust the idle speed and mixture as well. So I taxi’d out, did a run up check to clear the spark plugs and then idled and verified the speed and richness of the mixture. I had to make a small adjustment but on the second try it all looked good.

I reinstalled the cowl and went for a short 20 minute flight to heat up the oil and test everything out.