Super sweet oil change action shots

OK, maybe not super-sweet but kind of enlightening none-the-less.

I worked with one of the co-owners, who has experience changing aircraft oil, to learn the ropes of changing the oil. It turned out to be a fairly simple process - easier than changing the oil on a car or motorcycle.

We first removed the cowling, which came off and on surprisingly easy, and then drained the oil. Our airplane doesn't have a filter so there was nothing to do WRT that - though no filter means twice as many oil changes (every 50 hours instead of every 100). We didn't clean the oil screens yet - I plan to get with our mechanic in a few days to learn that process.

We added the fresh oil in and Maciek and I did some taxiing and a run-up in the dark to test it out. We watched the oil pressure throughout and everything looked great!

To complete the task I had to add an entry to the Engine logbook.

The enlightening part for me was to realize how the engine is just hanging out in front of the airplane, attached to the firewall by 4 spindley-looking bars.

Below are some of the photos.
Click on them to get bigger versions and see any notes/annotations I've added.

engine_sides
starter
mag
mounts
john_runup
jason_runup

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