Hello all,

I have a quandary with this engine and am hoping to get some help in solving it.

I have about 60 hours on the engine now and it runs quite well.  Due to the worries related to Fred Moreno’s problem with his engine and various others I was highly concerned about the safety of operating my L-IVP with this power plant.  To that end I’ve been monitoring it closely and have been doing frequent oil changes to look for developing problems. 

All parameters have been good except there was silicone early on in the oil (first change was at 5 hours then at about 15, then at 35 hours and another later on.) and a slight elevation in aluminum.  Second oil change still have the silicon and aluminum was much higher.  Also there was a bit of metal flakes in the filter element – non magnetic.  Last oil change was even higher aluminum and silicon still elevated.  The oil filter element looked like it had glitter applied to it.  Blackstone has been doing the oil analysis.  I sent the last filter element to Howard Fenton (2^nd oilpinion in Oklahoma) and he expressed concern and advised to quit flying until the problem is figured out. 

He says the only metal found is aluminum and he’s never seen or heard of that.  Always in his experience there would be some other metal showing up in excess as well because there isn’t a place in the engine he’s aware of the aluminum rubs against aluminum.

I discovered after the second oil change that the alternate air door was not closing completely and that probably explains the silicon.

I did compression check a couple of days ago and got normal readings – 80/75 to 77.

I don’t have a plan about how to trouble shoot the origin of this metal.  I notice that cylinder #5 runs hottest egt’s during warmup but other than that I can’t think of anything out of the ordinary.

Does anyone have a suggestion about how to  sleuth out this problem?

Regards,

John Barrett, CEO

Leading Edge Composites

PO Box 428

Port Hadlock, WA 98339

www.carbinge.com