Phillips XC II oil

[parksjm]

Does anyone remember what was the problem with Phillips XC II 20w50 oil? The new Phillips is just XC with no "II".
I quit using it because of some controversy back in the 80's, now I don't recall what it was about. Is it safe to use, or is there still a problem with it?
Thanks,
JP

[Robert Eilers]

I have been using the Phillips XC 20w50 for years - in my Champ and now in my 170B - with good results. Never used Phillips XC II 20x50.

[Metal Master]

Does anyone remember what was the problem with Phillips XC II 20w50 oil? The new Phillips is just XC with no "II".
I quit using it because of some controversy back in the 80's, now I don't recall what it was about. Is it safe to use, or is there still a problem with it?
Thanks,
JP

We had a Philips distributor contract back in the 80's when this issue occurred. Phillips recalled all of the XCII oil as it had been as I recall blended out of an oil base that had a lot of Sulfur in it, However what ever it was, it caused our rental airplanes to have problems with the valves sticking almost every 100 hours so that we got real adept at reaming the valve guides per the Lycoming Service bulletin. Shortly after that was when the recall occurred and we stopped using it.

Anecdotally the person who ordered and managed our oil at that time never got our stock of XCII sent in to Phillips within the recall moratorium date and we ended up stuck with about 100 cases of Phillips XCII 20W 50 in our stock room. Phillips would not take it back. So we tried using one quart in every oil change. That did not work either, soon after we started using just one quart in an oil change we started having the valve sticking problem again. After changing to Aero Shell single weight oils we never had that valve sticking problem on a regular occurring basis after that. We also when the price was right went back to using Phillips XC 20W 50 (the current product) some years latter when a different distributor offered us better pricing than we were getting with the Aero Shell. As a courtesy they took back all of the original XCII 20 W 50 oil stock we had remaining. Which were still around 100 cases.

I would say that a good ½ of my customers used XC 20W 50 (current) after that with no problem. I have never had a problem using it.

We also got Balled up in the Mobil One synthetic oil issue and several customers that had insisted on using that ended up having to have their engines replaced, Repaired and props overhauled or flushed.

[parksjm]

ok, thanks!

[HA]

what he said, bad batch way back when which was recalled. we use X/C in all of our piston airplanes at work, from 172's to C340's and Navajo's. it has always worked fine for us, multiweight is a big advantage up here.