im kind of a nerd for getting all the water out of all of my engines oil. and tried a few things on c85's, c90s and 0200's. ive invested my entire life into my cub and want to do eveything i can to make it (particularly is extremely expensive motor) to last my lifetime (or to make TBO and beyond).
for winter on a stock style J-3 exhaust if i remember right.
1. wrapping the oil sump raises oil 10-30 degrees depending on material and its airtightness
2. running the oil topped off seemed to get the temps up, i think its because theirs less ratio of oil splashing down the oil tank which is acting like a big heat sink.
3. clamp a peice of sheet metal to the carb heat intake to act as a ghetto air-scoop. (the stock front air intake on J3's doesnt flow air worth beans). T into the carb heat scat tube and attach that to your oil tank wrap in a way that it blows hot ram air on the oil tank when carb heat is off. (i beleive i had routed this additional line in a way that it also supplemented my cabin heat but it been a while since i looked at that plane and might be wrong about that memory.)
if i remember right those mods got the 85 hp J3 i was flying oil temp from 110-120F up to 180ish on a 30 degree day.
anytime i found water on the dipstick, on the next flight i'd do a 40mph full throttle turning/slipping climb and get the oil temp up to 210 and that would burn off the water.
other tips.
1. make every flight at least 1 hr in the winter. a 30 minutue flight even in the summer with my 0200 makes tons of water. (if your dipstick is full of cottage cheese, so are you valve covers and accessory case)
2. dont use mutli-viscs in low comp continentals, particularly when running leaded fuel.
3. stick with w80 or w100 with some cam guard or fly your plane often. theirs some very eye opening and confirming resaons for that savvy avation put on youtube called "all about oil' that is very well worth the watch.
4. dont cover your inner cylinder baffels. i only see potential problems doing that.
5. my preheater is a $5 hair drier blowing directly on the oil sump. 30 minutes gets me from 32f to 120F on my temp gauge and 1 hr gets the entire engine to 140+. the result is that my oil temp gets up to 180 WAY WAY quicker making the water start to burn off sooner.
6. i distrust and dislike the glue on oil sump heaters for many reasons. 1. they create cold spots in the motor and those cold spots act as water condensers. 2. they are dangerous as hell, we found many sump heaters that where peeling off which was causing dangerous overheating (as in smoke in the hamger), and failing wiring that was 1 gas fume away from burning up a plane and hanger 3. they dont warm the cylinders worth beans compared to a hot airbath and 4. they take forever.
additional brainstorm i just had.
how about building some baffels that route the hot inner cylinder air down onto the oil sump?
and of course we'd NEVER EVER do any of these mods to a certified aircraft because that would be extremly dangerous and highly illegal, these mods are only safe if its an experiment.
theirs a couple tricks for lowering small continental oil temp too, but i'll leave that for the summer.
