Southland,
Sorry you misunderstood my slightly tongue in cheek reference to a typo. I know it is a typo, as I HAVE read the article. Navajo's have TIO 540's Of course i know you meant Chieftains have both LTIO and TIO 540's. No difference for leaning of course..........
However Mr Deacon makes some good points, I do recall mentioning some answers need to be found and I wholeheartedly agree that it must be done NOW. WRT leaning of L/TIO 540's as fitted to Chieftains, I must confess I have never seen anywhere where Lycoming recommend running these engines LOP. I'm not talking about Piper or any snake oil salesmen or anybody else, I mean Lycoming. Mr Deacon may well be correct, I suspect that he is as far as leaning goes. However, he makes the point that it is DANGEROUS to use this tecnique if your aircraft does not have an engine monitoring sytem that analyses the individual cylinders. Since most don't, LOP operation is at best a gamble, especially with regard to the maintenance matters you so correctly raised. I simply don't think his theory is the complete solution here, as some may think. We get excellent cylinder life from our chieftains, using a standard leaning tecnique, which admittedly, is slightly on the rich side of the Lycoming recommendations. It works, practical experience has shown us that. I am reasonably picky about the instrumentation. (STD PIPER FARE THO!!!!!) I would however like someone to explain to me where "Lead Oxy Bromide" induced detonation has been hiding for the last 30 years???????
Last edited by Dale Harris; 27th Jun 2002 at 17:03.