LYCOMING ENGINE RUNNING ROUGH

As a follow up to my prior post regarding the Lycoming O-360 rough engine symptoms, during the annual inspection we decided to replace the remaining 3 intake to cylinder head gaskets.  It was a good thing that we did.  The gaskets had about 500 hours on them.  Number 2 cylinder had about a 1/4" piece of the gasket missing.  On number 3 and 4 cylinders the gaskets were intact but crumbled when removed.  None of them would have lasted many more hours without causing major leaks on the intake.  I would recommend that you consider replacing them around 500 hours just to preclude this problem as I am sure that all of the gaskets have about the same life span.  If you do this during another scheduled maintenance function the cost should be very low.  Once the cowling is off of the airplane they are easy to access.

Hopefully this will save you some concerned flight events and a few dollars on troubleshooting.  After this post I will get back to our specialty of aircraft tools and Vans RV aircraft tool kits.  Happy flying!

If this post helps you please let us know by posting a comment.