FLY 4 FUN
Something To Believe In, I Do
As we closed the Atlantic Flyer presses last month on the Fly4Fun chronicles, I promised that I would continue the story of why my mechanic said that my1600 hour engine was considered so clean. Just for a little background, I have owned my trusty Piper Tri-Pacer “Pegasus” for about 20 years now. When I originally purchased it the fabric had seen it’s better days. I did an old “rejuvenation” project and gave it a top coat of enamel to help cure some ring worm problems and extend the life briefly. That brought me up to about 1993 when I made arrangements with Ray Stits and Ron Alexander to do a wing recover demonstration project while at Sun ‘N Fun and I would do the rest at home. So, with that in mind I prepared the wings and by the end of Sun ‘N Fun at the end of April they were stored away ready for the final coatings and paint. I spent the rest of that year working on the rest of the covering on the control surfaces and fuselage.
During that period I also heard about another miracle product, AvBlend and was impressed by the findings that it helped to protect the engine from condensation moisture in the oil. I was surprised to find that AvBlend was marketed by a local company, so I invited them to speak to our EAA Chapter. Now I was really hooked by the claims, and starting asking local experts about their opinion of the product. My personal mechanical guru, who had taken care of this airplane for the ten years before I purchased it, told me he has used it for years and swears by it. In fact, in all my canvassing, I didn’t find anyone who couldn’t substantiate the claims.
Well, now that winter was closing in on the Carolina’s and my recovering project was proceeding as expected, I decided to once again don my white scientist coat and convert part of my workshop to a laboratory. In my real job, I am a machinist supervisor so I purchased a bar of 8620 steel alloy, which is used for cam and crank shafts in many engines. I turned and cut and polished and marked this steel into some usable size parts and placed them in some marked containers with different types of aviation oil. There were two containers for each oil type, one sample being enhanced with AvBlend while the other one didn’t. Next I constructed a case where I could control the environment that these parts could be housed in. I could heat the oil to normal operating temperatures and hold it for a period of time with the samples submerged then the parts were lifted and the parts were allowed to “Drip Dry” similar to the actions of operating your engine then shutting down. Then the parts were allowed to cool outside temperature with high humidity. I also could introduce a hostile atmosphere much like around the ocean and even used a mild acidic solution at times just like the air we all breath and fly though daily. I tried to make everything as legitimate as possible. I heated and cooled and subjected the parts to extreme environments every day to two for a period of a month.
At the end of the month of heat and cooling cycles, I let the parts sit for another week in the humid and hostile environment and then removed the parts and examined them for evidence of deterioration, oxidization or rust. No matter which base oil brand was in each sample, without exception, the parts in the oil with the AvBlend additive were cleaner and showed far less corrosion then those without the extra additive. To me that was proof positive that micro lubrication works and this actually does soak into metal as advertised.
One afternoon, a couple weeks after I wrote up this experiment in another local flying tabloid, I suddenly received a call from the marketers of AvBlend, Morrison International. When my wife called me to the phone and said it was someone from AvBlend, my blood turned cold. No I hadn’t contacted them and told them of what I was doing, but I couldn’t see how they cold be upset with my experiment. On the phone was the marketing manager for AvBlend. He said the “boss” would like to speak to me and asked me to be at their office at 3:00 PM the next day. I made the twenty-mile cross county drive and walked up nervously, arriving right on schedule. The phone messenger greeted me and he escorted me immediately to the big corner office. As soon as I walked in, sitting behind the big cherry desk was the head honcho Sid Morrison. His first words were “I just wanted to meet you in person and say Thanks for the praise”. We talked like old friends for about an hour, hangar flying just like any two pilots would do. He had his assistant tell me the history of AvBlend and how closely it resembles their other product, Z-Max for cars. He said he has used AvBlend in his Waco forever and swears by the results getting better fuel economy along with the other advantages. As I walked out of the front door, I took a deep breath, and finally had a chance to relax. I also left with a year’s supply of product. Well done, I thought.
In today’s world of pressures against General Aviation, not mentioning the fact that fuel prices having doubled in the last four years, we find ourselves being more selective, if not more conservative in our trips and eventually the amount of flying we do. With that in mind, we have to take every precaution to help maintain the integrity of our aircraft even when it is sitting idle in the hangar. That goes for both the airframe and power plant. I change my oil when due, either by hours or time, I wash my airplane more often and lubricate hinges and moving parts when finished. I still try to get at least a full =hour flight every week, even if I don’t go somewhere, just to circulate and warm the fluids up to operating temperatures. Now I don’t want this to sound like a NASCAR driver announcement, throwing in sponsor names in every sentence but I did just take a drink of my Coke. The AvBlend- AeroShell-Poly-Fiber- Garmin Piper Tri-Pacer Pegasus is ready to Fly4Fun at a moments notice.
By Jack E. Neubacher