AOPA Pilot Magazine - August 2023 - 77

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us a new fuel spider under warranty. We excitedly
fitted it, went flying, and got the exact same results.
Today we ignore the data and assume it to be normal,
but that's only because otherwise we'd never fly, and
there haven't been any more engine stumbles.
It's a dilemma we all face every day as we balance
the gift of information with the burden of knowledge.
How much weight to give the data is personal
preference, but between the extremes of hardline
head-in-the-sanders and data geeks sweating a onedegree
difference between cylinders four and five
are most of us who are easily driven down a rabbit
hole by the desire to have our airplanes be safer and
more reliable.
How to avoid becoming neurotic and calm
our uncertainties in the meantime? I asked Busch
what I could focus on and what I could ignore, and
while he didn't seem too interested in what could
be completely ignored, he did offer a few things to
focus on, one which surprised me. Once in flight,
he said, oil pressure should be rock solid. The oil
pump cycles significantly more oil than the engine
needs, and the oil pressure relief valve regulates
the pressure precisely. Busch described it as one
of the few engine parameters that's regulated. Oil
temperature is another through the Vernatherm.
" They should be very stable, and anything that
causes oil pressure to fluctuate is bad. " So, if
pressure is going up or down in flight, it's a near
certainty there is a problem. Sometimes a serious
one that requires quick action.
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Other than that, using the monitor to ensure
CHTs stay below 400 degrees Fahrenheit on a
Continental and 420 degrees F on a Lycoming will
help extend the life of the engine and cylinders
immensely.
I never worried about my
exact EGT prior to installing
the engine monitor, and
our engine never had any
serious problems. We were
the proverbial fat, dumb,
and happy.
If that doesn't help ease your engine monitor
anxieties, Savvy Aviation also has a report card for
owners who fly most common light airplanes. The
report card is 12 parameters that provides trend
data for your engine, and some indexing to others
like yours in the fleet. Savvy knows, for example, that
the temperature gap between the cylinders in our
IO-360-KB CHTs is completely normal.
It's a good start toward a promising future that
Data Like everything else on the analysis platform that we expected to be perfect, the oil pressure seems erratic. That is until
you see that the difference between the highest and lowest readings is only 4 psi. That tight tolerance is something to
watch out for because oil pressure should be tightly regulated at all times.
will take our engine monitors from mere sophisticated
management devices to the foundation of
hard-core diagnostic information. Count me in.
ian.twombly@aopa.org
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AOPA PILOT / August 2023
77
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AOPA Pilot Magazine - August 2023

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