Sawacs

My Feedback: (4)

Gents, in summary, if you decide to run your engine and or break it in on synthetic fuels only, never let it go lean.

If you don't mind cleaning the engine ever so often from castor gum, run castor.

If you have listened to all the responses to all the questions ever posed about synthetic vs castor and you started off with castor and had poor results, then immediately switch to synthetic and never look back. If you started off with synthetic and had the same problem as above, the do the exact opposite and live happily ever after..

Manufacturers promote, customers buy.. Myself.. I try, determine, then continue to buy what works..

Cheers, Sawacs

bldrums

I have Saito .56, .91 .82 engines and I just buy whatever fuel I see on the shelf, usually the cheapest and all my Saitos run like fine watches. Not because I am cheap or dont care...I just never really researched the issue much. May be because my engines have had all of the "blends" ?? I do break- in following the Saito manuals and check the valve settings every now and then..use a squirt of after run sometimes.
The oldest ( .56) 10 yrs, the (.91 ) 8 yrs and the ( .82 ) is only 4 months old, idles and runs sooooo nice already. I have a 1.25 on the way and I not going to mess with success. Saitos are just excellent engines anyway. I guess in some cases, too much infomation could be just as useless as too little. ??
........ Or, I could just be lucky so far ........

Dont get me wrong, I would have bailed out of this hobby years ago without the expertise help and advise from all the folks here. Just commenting.

thanks, Bill

50+AirYears

First, over the last 30 years or so, the engine gurus were periodically saying 'use only castor, maybe mostly synthetic with some castor, all synthetic, absolutely no castor, then finally, a blend with castor is good'.
Saito over the years, and in different countries, seems to be following suit.
Can't anybody make up their minds?
One of our club members, a retired combustion engineer did some research for an article in our club newsletter. His findings include the concepts that at a lean run where almost any reasonably priced synthetic burns off and stops lubricating, castor still hold up and continues to carry off heat in the unburned oil, sometimes as high as 20 C above the synthetic burn-off. The film of castor on parts after a run protects from corrosion. Castor has a higher film strength and hold up under load better.
My own experiences:
I watch people who use 100% synthetic replacing ball bearings frequently. Also wearing out engines within a couple years. I have ball and needle bearing engines from as far back as the elate 50s that still have the original bearings. The few times I have replaced bearings have been due to flying off sand and salt flat in North Africa. The only time I ran straight synthetic oil, I burned up two engine from overheating. One of them was able to be salvaged by going back to Fox Superfuel (28% castor).
I once had a plane spend almost a month setting lost in a pile of oak leaves. Now, water run-off from oak leaves can be pretty acidic. And in Northern Ohio, November is pretty wet. When I finally found it, almost every bit of metal on the plane, except the engine and part of the LG that catches a lot of the exhaust was pretty corroded. I flushed the brown water out of the engine, took it apart, and didn't find a trace of rust. BTW, I don't use after run oil. Never have.
My personal preference is to run either all castor, or make sure that at least 30% of the oil content is castor. I usually add anywhere from 5 to 8 ounces of castor to my fuel.