Pulling the cowl allows the opportunity to inspect the FWF area. Could save your life!
Most definitely, and I've done some minor maintenance during other oil changes but nothing that could compromise airworthiness if deferred (e.g. EGT probes).
Pulling the cowl allows the opportunity to inspect the FWF area. Could save your life!
For clarification, the IO-390 is on a 25hr oil change and 50hr oil/filter change regimen. The 25 hour oil change procedure is what the sump vacuum question is about. Engine has never made metal and oil analysis is taken @50hr when filter is changed.
I have never looked inside my "cold air" sump to see how the oil flows out, and compared it with how much could be picked up by a vacuum
^^^^^AMEN^^^^^I would NEVER consider changing the oil and not the filter. Why would you want to run new, clean oil through a dirty filter.
I can see there are situation that one would want to change the oil but not the oil filter. Lets say that you have flown only 4-5 hours in the last four months and it is time to change the oil due to the calendar time. Is it that critical to change the filter? Changing oil is easy but the oil filter in some cases due to access could be more time consuming. The oil filter is about 4 hours of flying gas and another filter to the land field.^^^^^AMEN^^^^^
Besides, if you have 7qt in your engine and it burns 1qt every 10hrs, then at the 25hr point you will have already replaced 2.5qt with new oil.
I'm not a fan of pulling cowls on my 7A just to change oil. Despite the fact that not all of the oil is scavenged if vacuuming out the sump, what other downsides are there with the procedure?
The oil filter is about 4 hours of flying gas
What kind of filter are you using???
I only get about 30 minutes of flying gas for the price of a filter...