I dragged a friend to a Phillips 66 talk at the Lycoming pavilion and we found that Phillips 66 had dragged out a team of four experts, including the company’s top “scientist” in this domain, to answer questions from piston peasants.
What did we learn? A preference for straight weight 100W is purely superstitious and, even in a reliably warm climate such as Florida’s, it is smarter to use Philips XC 20W-50 (bizarrely, the “50” in the multiweight and the “100” refer to the same “SAE 50” spec for viscosity at higher temperatures).
If you have a Lycoming engine, you should definitely use the “Victory” version of Phillips, which is preblended with a Lycoming-recommended anti-wear additive. For Continental owners, the representatives who were present leaned toward either the Victory version or XC plus CamGuard if the plane isn’t flown frequently.
Since every group needs at least one obnoxious person, I asked “You have a huge team of PhD scientists. All that CamGuard has is a snake. Why can’t you put something in the oil that will prevent corrosion for a plane that doesn’t fly regularly?” Unlike America’s Greatest Scientist, the chief scientist at Philips 66’s oil division did not invoke the 5th Amendment. He answered that corrosion is an almost undefeatable enemy. There is always some water in the oil, even if a plane is based in the Arizona desert and even if the owner puts a Drybot in the filler tube (sadly, suitable only for T hangar royalty; those of us in shared hangars can’t expect the line guys to keep unplugging it and plugging it back in when the aircraft is moved). There is thus no substitute for flying regularly (“at least monthly”, but of course weekly is better).
What about the FAA-industry dream of unleaded gasoline in 1950s engines? So far, there isn’t a great one-fuel-fits-all solution. Patrick Ealy, a master’s student at University of North Dakota, gave a talk about capturing the lead out of the exhaust stream (about 40 minutes in; the first part of the talk is more about how aviation 100LL is falsely accused of being a significant contributor to America’s falling average IQ; he points out that even “unleaded” car gasoline has some naturally occurring lead in it and there are a lot more ground vehicles out there burning dinosaur blood than there are piston aircraft).
Related:
- “Unleaded fuel takes center stage at AirVenture” (AOPA): “the FAA plans to release new versions of the transition plan after each phase. … The first phase includes authorizing fuels and doing comparison testing. … The third and fourth phases focus on the wide-scale transition—first in the Lower 48, with a goal of completing the work by 2030, followed by Alaska two years later.” (for the Cirrus SR20 with IO-360-ES engine… no unleaded fuel is approved by Cirrus, though GAMI G100UL is approved for this engine/airframe by the FAA)
“Lead out, weed in,” I always say.
> 100LL is falsely accused of being a significant contributor to America’s falling average IQ
So is weed. Ha, ha and duh. Both not even statistically significant compared to social media and A.I. use. Still, it is a good goal to remove lead from avgas and social media/A.I. from the Internet.
> Since every group needs at least one obnoxious person
I’ll show myself out, we don’t need two, do we?
Interests change over time. Maybe sell the SR-20 to Scott Manley & get the Corvette instead of trying to preserve it.
Or spend more time flying. Planes are meant to fly, not to be hangar queens.