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Oil breather
Posted: Mon Jul 11, 2005 8:45 pm
by Psmith
Folks,
Has anyone considered running the crankcase breather down the landing gear to keep the belly clean? And would a small hole in the breather, within the lower cowling, take care of frozen condensation the AD was concerned about?
Pete Smith
170A N1320D
Posted: Mon Jul 11, 2005 10:35 pm
by N73087
It is only called a "crankcase breather." It actually serves as an automatic tailwheel lubrication system.
breather questions
Posted: Tue Jul 12, 2005 4:52 pm
by HA
search around this site for lots of answers to your breather questions, there have been a few discussions in recent memory.
running the breather back to the gear often leads to creating an oil pump out of your breather system, since you have no way to test if you're putting the open end in a lower pressure area or a higher one. I've seen some Cubs with a hose running way back, but they usually had other (compression etc) problems and were mainly just relocating the mess. and you could make it much worse, like I said above.
as far as the AD, putting a little hole in the breather line up inside the cowling (at the rear of the engine) is pretty much exactly what you are directed to do by the AD to solve the problem. the best way is to make a small hacksaw cut about 1/4 of the way into the aluminum tubing, then with a pliers bend in the top part so there is an opening, and you're done.
Posted: Wed Jul 13, 2005 4:10 am
by zero.one.victor
What I've seen done with aerobatic airplanes (Pitts, etrc) is to run the breather tube way back to the tailwheel area, so any oil puking out the breather does so aft of the entire airplane. But I think this is done in case of excess oil puking due to inverted activity.
Eric
Posted: Wed Jul 13, 2005 10:42 am
by GAHorn