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Video of my engine assembly

j-red

Well Known Member
My engine, an o-360A1A was born back in about 1993 and first run in 1999. It flew about 500 hours until a noseover accident in 2009 resulting in a prop strike. I completely tore down the engine and had the crank and cam sent out for inspection. The case was sent to be professionally cleaned. The cylinders were "freshened up" by Columbia aircraft services (they now look like new, but were not technically overhauled because of the low time). New rings and pistons were purchased for the rebuild.

Many other parts were inspected and re-worked or replaced, and some were simply cleaned up and re-used.

After getting a quote of around $4500 just to assemble this growing pile of parts, I decided to build the engine myself. I was leaning toward this anyway, so the cost wasn't the primary factor, but it definitely got the ball rolling. This isn't my first aircraft engine build, but it is the first Lycoming. I purchased and studied two overhaul instructional video's, read the Lycoming overhaul manual, and looked at dozens of builders websites to make sure I was as prepared as possible. I downloaded all of the appropriate tech sheets that I could find and added them to the collection.

So... armed with as much information as I could collect, I set about to build my engine and accomplished that objective working from 5:30am to about 9am each day for four days.

I've prepared the following video to document the process. THIS IS IN NO WAY TO BE CONSIDERED INSTRUCTIONAL. I am an amateur building this engine for my own education and recreation. The sole motivation in posting it here (it isn't public on youtube) is to request that those with some experience kindly take the time to view it and let me know if you see something alarming, missing, or that could have been done better. Not every single piece of the build is there, but i have attempted to make note of the steps taken even if they are not recorded. Note that the video was taken after steps were completed to document what was done, not during to show how to perform that step. Finally, there are a few tasks yet to be done but which can be completed now that the engine is hung. These are listed at the end of the video.

Thanks.

https://youtu.be/mP9qrsFXtMo
 
About to watch it. Couple questions.

About how much did you have in cost for the tear down, assembly?
I've built many engines myself, non aviation. Did you find anything surprising? I don't think lycomings are anything difficult, just different.
 
Just about 7K, but that includes a new electronic ignition and impulse mag, fuel pump, new pistons and pins, obviously new bearings, and some hardware. The cylinders alone were $1700 of that (although $400 of that was the overpriced rings they fit to the barrels for me which I wouldn't have had them do if I'd realized it...). At only 500 hours I could have lapped the valves myself, put a hone on them and called it a day, but it didn't make sense to put grimy leaded-up cylinders on a brand new bottom.
Hope that helps. I can shoot you a spreadsheet with the specifics if you want.
 
Thanks for sharing

Have never seen one of these from the inside with this many details. Also helps that everything is new and clean. Very cool!
 
Crank

Hey J Red I see you sent your crank to Rick Romans and got the old .003 job do you really think that your crank needed turning with only 500TT?I really doubt it or they would be falling out of an engine with 2000 hours on it.
Bob
 
According to RR, there were a couple of journals with some deep scratches that needed to be ground out, so they did them all. Hard to say what caused that since i wasn't around for the first 500 hours, but it is conceivable that the oil wasn't changed properly, or a bit of trash got in there. Or maybe there's more of a conspiracy to it :D Who knows.
 
For a prop strike there is more than the crank and cam to be inspected. All the gears need to be NDT'd for cracks. Was this done? I think there is a SB that defines all this. It sounds like you were very prepared so perhaps you are well aware of all this, but I thought I would mention it just in case. I am looking forward to watching the video.
 
Performance Update

Hit 10 hours since the rebuild yesterday and decided to change the oil and check compressions to find out how things are going.

I've been pleased to see that there has been no measurable oil consumption in the first 10 hours -seeing 6qts on the stick before each flight- which is a bit of a surprise because I was under the impression that it would be very high initially and then taper off within 25-50 hours, signifying the breakin was complete. Will send the oil off for analysis so as to begin to build a benchmark for this engines condition.

Compressions are all 77/80 or higher, so it looks like the rings are seating nicely.

Temps could be a bit on the high side, but not unreasonable. In climb, #3 is the cylinder to watch, but will stay under 400 as long as power and speed are managed (Open to suggestions on management. My current procedure is to climb at 90-100kts to 700', then throttle back and set up more of a cruise-climb at 120kts which results in about 1k fpm.) In cruise, they are all in the 330's at 2500rpm which seems to be the norm.

Don't want to jinx anything, but for now I couldn't be more pleased with the way this engine build has progressed.
 
For a prop strike there is more than the crank and cam to be inspected. All the gears need to be NDT'd for cracks. Was this done? I think there is a SB that defines all this. It sounds like you were very prepared so perhaps you are well aware of all this, but I thought I would mention it just in case. I am looking forward to watching the video.

For reference, this is the latest version of the Lycoming SB, updated in 2016 -

https://www.lycoming.com/sites/defa...r Loss of Propeller_Rotor Blade or Ti (1).pdf
 
Prop strike

I might be the bearer of bad news. Lycoming says new rod bolts anytime you loosen them. May be you failed to mention it. You did a very nice job though.
 
Thanks. I did print out and do all the prep-work based on a copy of the Lycoming SB.

Regarding the connecting rod bolts... I know that's standard procedure and I would never recommend anyone under any normal circumstances reuse theirs. I might get flamed for this, but I did re-use them and here's why:

After sending my connecting rods out to be inspected, I received a call from a tech at Rick Romans explaining that rarely, but occaisionally, something gets messed up during the manufacturing process and instead of scrapping the parts, Lycoming drills the rod bolt holes larger and uses a larger connecting rod bolt than normal. When this happens to one rod, they go ahead and ream the others out and install these larger bolts in all of them. Then, they mark "H5" on each of the connecting rods to let you know that they take the special larger diameter bolts.

The fine folks at Lycoming apparently did this when manufacturing my engine and then made it very difficult to procure replacement H5 bolts -although they can occasionally be found for $350 a piece!

The next thing he said was that since these bolts were larger and thus stronger than the originals, and since they had such little time on them, if it were his own engine, and there were no other damage found to indicate that they might be suspect (which there was not), then he'd stick them back in and then just replace the whole set of connecting rods when overhaul time came around. After weighing the situation and searching high and low for a matching set of standard connecting rods, I opted to follow that advice and re-use them. Is there risk involved with doing that? Of course. Can you find stories of brand-new Lycoming engines chucking connecting rods through the case because of bad factory-new bolts? It isn't common, but they're out there. It was a calculated risk, but one that I've made peace with.
 
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Very nice vid, thanks for posting. just to add, (one ) way of cleaning the cylinders after a hone is to use hot soapy water with Dawn dish soap to get all hone abrasive material out of the microscopic valleys of the cylinder wall, immediately dry and then oil. Great job!
 
Question in regards to running two types of ignition. The electronic would be precise wouldn't the impulse spark at a slightly different degree in the cycle after a bit of wear? I understand that you are looking for redundancy but as I understand it you want the spark to be synchronised.
 
You're right in that the timing is such that the EI and mag are only synced during a very small window of operation and that, with its advanced timing, the EI is really doing all the work. That is evidenced during "mag checks," during which there is a noticeable RPM lag when the EI is turned off, but none whatsoever when the magneto is off.

Where this basically becomes a moot point is that the electronic ignition coils fire a far more powerful spark than a traditional magneto, meaning that the engine can operate with near-peak performance on just the EI.

To my perspective, the mag is basically an emergency "Backup" and may bat a cleanup role in the combustion process.
 
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