mike h wrote:

Other than 'belling' the mouth of the oil pickup, and machining the oil
passage boss to the front cover for a bigger Oring, what sort of oil

mods

have folks done? I'm at about that stage in my rebuild.

Mike Harrington

You got me there Mike.

In almost four years of this newsletter people have had little or no
trouble with the oil system itself other than cooling. Some have mentioned
the "windowed main" or rotor bearing inserts. Did you disable
the oil thermostat in the nose of the e-shaft? The function of that

thermostat

is to relieve the oil pressure in the e-shaft until the oil is warmed up.
I am not sure why that thermostat is used in the first place. Perhaps
it is a smog  or low speed fuel consumption thing. People machine a little
insert that looks just like a warm thermostat cartridge to block the
relief hole in the e-shaft.

Also some have enlarged the oil jets in the e-shaft that supply
cooling oil to the rotors. There is a plus and minus to this idea.
Larger jets could mean lower oil pressure to the bearings.
I would suspect it would be a good idea in conjunction
with a larger capacity oil pump.

There is also a spring loaded centrifugal ball valve in there that limits
rotor cooling oil at low RPM. I am not so sure it is a good idea
to remove this as oil pressure might be too low at idle.

Have you put in teflon encap silicone oil O-rings in the rotor
oil scraper rings?

Paul Lamar

My motor is fitted with enlarged E shaft oil jets, as recommended by the
racing team in W. Australia. Oil pressure runs at 80 psi. Also has sump baffle
to stop oil foam from reaching the pump.
Ian RV6A.

Ops I forgot about Andy Venable's oil pressure loss after 400 hours but he had an
external oil container he was drawing oil from with his plugs up engine.
Lost oil pressure while on the ground for some reason we never nailed down.
Skip, do you know what happened with Andy's engine?

Finn Lassen had his oil filter plumbed backwards. A real no no as there is
a one way valve in the oil filter.

Also Finn Lassen started his engine up WOT with no oil pressure,
no prop, ran it up to somewhere around 10,000 RPM in a second or two 
where it seized. He chiseled it apart, replaced the bearings and 
he is flying it as we speak.

Paul Lamar
 
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