Well, the bottom line (in my mind) seems to be the oil cooler hose
right at the fitting on the oil screen... I had a second A&PI come
look at the engine... He says those lines, "never leak"... This line
passes right by the oil temp bulb - which this time was not dripping
oil, go figure... Every thing else was pretty well covered with a film
of oil... There is no pattern you can discern... It will not leak when
ground run, or even flown for a short time (cool day)... But get
rolling on a hot day shooting circuits and bangs and it leaks
somewhere, whilst the airflow through the engine compartment blows it
all around... It appears to me that hot oil is penetrating through the
inner liner, wicking along underneath the outer covering and then
oozing/misting out the braid for a good 1/3 of it's length, so that
there is no discrete source...

Anyway, two mechanics and about a half dozen hangar bums have now
said the oil cooler lines are fine - which makes it almost 100% sure
that it IS the problem... So, I got on the phone with a fella who
makes hoses... We have the parts numbers from the original parts
manual, but given that hoses and fittings may have been altered in 48
years, I am pulling every doggone hose in the entire engine compartment
and shipping them to him... He will make a new set of teflon hoses with
integral firesleeve and ship them back... The advantage of this expense
over just replacing the suspect rubber hose is that these hoses
theoretically do not harden and never require changing... If nothing
else, it should look pretty...
So the plane will be down till the middle of next week, at least...

Stay tuned... Don't touch that dial!

\denn