flash59

I would like to express my thanx to all those who replied. Today I changed the oil (20W50) and filter. Took it around the patch a few times and everything looked great. Water temp 192 and oil temp 220 steady @5100 rpm. Planning on installing an oil cooler soon, plumbed into the outlets on the bottom of the oil pump. Just have to work out a design for mounting brackets and air scoop. Anyway its running strong so its time to get out and do some serious flyin. Thanx again

Shawn The heater pipe from the the water pump and the pipe from the crossflow manifold are connected at the top of the block with a 4" piece of pre-formed , U-shaped heater hose. Anything longer would be to close to the propeller.

Thanks for all the input. This time around I was able to purge what little air was in the system with minimal effort. Burped the system at the cap twice and that was it. Temps were fine after that, 192 degrees. All was good for about 4 hours until the lower hose got against the 2 & 4 exhaust stack and that was the end of that hose. Changed it and started over again. 2.5 hours of ground runs later without any overheating I took it out for a flight. Water temp looked good (192 degrees) but the oil temps seemed a bit higher than normal ( 224 degrees @ 5100 rpm). As the flight progressed the water temp started fluctuating between 192 and 210 degrees, but this was preceeded by a rise in oil temp which was fluctuating between 224 and 233 degrees, I havent been able to find any specs to know what the oil temp should be. This high oil temp had happened once after re-installing the heads changed oil (it didnt have coolant in it but looked extremely thin), and filter. Once back at the hanger the oil indicated 1/2 quart over but showed no indication of coolant. It was just extremely hot and thin. In fact the oil pan was still quite hot long after (45 mniutes) the engine had cooled down. Chiltons talks about using the next higher grade of oil (10W40) sustained high rpm use ( I think 4500-5100 rpm would meet that). Any thoughts on that or on what the oil temp should be would be of great help. All I have been able to find about oil temp is 230-300 for turbocharged 2.2 and nothing for a FI 2.2

Thanks for the reply Gregg. I am using 92 octane auto fuel (Union 76). I have heard of some folks using 100LL AVGAS during cross country flights and auto fuel at their home field, but I have not tried this. It is fuel injected. I decided to pull and inspect the water pump, seemed like the smart thing to do since the timing belt was off anyway. Everything looked great. Alot of time was spent on timing. The engine sets quite close to the rotor mast so you cant get the balancer and center timing cover completely out of the way. It paid off though since the timing is spot on, at least by what the service manual outlines. I searched through the posts and found some nice info about filling the cooloing system. With any luck I wont have any problems purging air pockets this time around.

Yes this is a 92 2.2L installed on an experimental aircraft. It has always operated at about 198 degrees but the other day it spiked to 245 degrees. Radiator coolant temperature was about the same as outside temperature and the engine was hot. I replaced the thermostat (OEM subaru) and refilled the system and purged air from the system at the heater pipes on top of the block. This has worked well for me in the past. I operated the engine on the ground for 20 minutes and the temperature held steady at 198 degrees up to about 3500 rpm. But when the rpm was advanced for takeoff (5060 RPM) it immediately spiked to 245 again. I repeated this purge cycle several times, always with the same result. Thinking head gasket did a compression test (170 cylinders 2 & 4, 150 cylinders 1 & 3), prior to this compression readings were 170 cylinders 2 & 4 and 165 cylinders 1 & 3. I pulled the heads and had a machine shop check them out. The only thing obvious found was a slight warp on the 2 & 4 head between the cylinders and nothing on the 1 & 3 head. Although they did mention that it looked like someone had used a belt sander to surface them. Any thoughts would be of help