Is Oil Dilute modeled?

[toebone]

The switch works, but so far as I can see it does nothing for oil pressure on a cold engine. For anyone who doesn't know, oil dilute adds gas to the oil to thin it for cold weather or emergency ops. The gas eventually burns off when everything is warm. This keeps the oil pressure down, in the game if it gets high on take off you get a knock, and then dead silence when your engine quits a short time later. It takes quite a while to warm the engine up, and it would be nice to get moving a bit faster (mainly for Wolfpack missions)! I know these old models get left by the wayside after most of the work is done, but it would be nice if they still got a little TLC once in a while. BTW, I am not just bitching, it is a GREAT module, and there is very little left to work on that I have noticed.

[Art-J]

This subject has been brought up quite a few times before, I recall starting a thread about it long ago.

Dilute switch has never worked in Thunderbolt module, at least not in the same way as old implementation in Mustang and Spit (where it would indeed start dropping the pressure on cold engine right away). That being said, one has to keep in mind such an implementation was not quite realistic in the first place, as dumping gas into cold oil doesn't dilute the latter all that well really. In real life the switch was used shortly before last engine shut down, the only time when hot oil could mix with gas properly. Such mixture would do its job on the first cold start next day. 

So, currently the function either isn't implemented at all, or it's implemented in more realistic manner (also in Mustang and Spit nowadays), but since we can't save tech state from mission to mission, there's no way to test it (unless someone wants to play with excessive use of time acceleration ).

Old implementation might not be accurate, but it sure was useful in cold missions. The acceptable realism vs gameplay compromise I'd say. The only way to warm up Twin Wasp quicker today is to close the cooler shutter and ride that pressure at 120 PSI until temp goes up to 40-few. That should be safe'ish enough for takeoff.

[Dragon1-1]

There should be switches in editor for this, along with an engine pre-warmed by the ground crew. This was the actual practice in WWII, at least for fighters that were kept ready to scramble.

[Aernov]

This was reported at least twice, years ago, with no effect.

[Art-J]

On 11/3/2025 at 12:39 PM, Dragon1-1 said:

There should be switches in editor for this, along with an engine pre-warmed by the ground crew. This was the actual practice in WWII, at least for fighters that were kept ready to scramble.

Hear, hear! Would be a good solution of the problem I think. Competitor does it (setting for 'cold' start with pre-warmed engine that is), I suspect it could be done in DCS as well, similar to INS pre-alignment etc. options in modern aircraft modules.

Edited 10 hours ago by Art-J

[Gunfreak]

Indeed. I've read dozens of books about ww2 fighters(mostly British and American, but a few German ones too) 

And pilots would almost never do a full cold start up. Either the engine had been regularly wamred up. So it was just doing a few checks and get the engine started (like during scramble watch) or the pilots would walk up to an already running aircraft that the ground crew started 15 minutes earlier while the pilots threw some food and coffee in them. 

I know reflected loves to get us to cold start our aircraft, but in most of his ww2 campaigns, it would be more realistic to just jump into a hot start aircraft. But at least a "warm start" option would save us the 15+ minutes of warm up the P47 wants.

[Reflected]

It's funny I've just flown a few winter missions in the P-47, and was surprised that the engine warmed up just fine at 1200 RPM in about 5 minutes. With time acceleration that's nothing.

 

A pre warmed engine checkbox will be absolutely essential for carrier ops though.