With the right cooling, they can sustain high power ratings almost indefinitely and do so on the test stands
With a LOT of mods also…
A Thielert shares only the major items with the Merc engine on which it is based.
I’ve found your next car
No, I am sticking with my Scirocco… it will last me a long time, using 100% power for about 1% of the time 
The major items – ie the ones that usually break on a “vintage” engine? :)
A Thielert shares only the major items with the Merc engine on which it is based.
The differences are mostly to reduce weight. The Austro is the same Mercedes engine with very few modifications and it outputs even more power than the underlying car engine without a time limit. Not for a second I buy the argument that aero engines are more suited to delivering high power output over a long period of time than car engines with the proper cooling are.
Isnt a TBR similar to a throw away engine?
Isnt a TBR similar to a throw away engine?
It isn’t black and white IMO, even with a Lycontisaurus quite a few engine parts are thrown away at overhaul. Plus, Conti tends to eat through cylinders like there’s no tomorrow, while Lyco tends to eat its camlobes for breakfast…
“I am sure you would get a ~100% failure rate on car engines within a year if you ran them at 65% of max rated power the whole time. It’s not possible to make this comparison”
A friend of mine worked on the gearbox for the Bugatti Veyron. I forget the exact figures, but the design life in first gear at full power was measured in minutes.
Isnt a TBR similar to a throw away engine?
I think TBR is a way of saying “we want to do all overhauls in-house so we get to keep all the money, instead of spreading it out among 3rd party overhaul shops like Lyco/Conti do”
Of course you wrap it up in different language: “this is necessary to maintain the strict factory standards” 
A friend of mine worked on the gearbox for the Bugatti Veyron. I forget the exact figures, but the design life in first gear at full power was measured in minutes.
I think I saw that gearbox, exhibited at a certain firm at Shoreham…
Or the products we have brought to market are not really ready yet. So we will use the customerto do our research for us.
Then by having a tbr we can see where our units are weak and we can then work to improve them.
We can also keep a lid on any gossip on what’s found on these units.
I couldn’t have put it better myself, Bathman.
I do that too in my business, but more carefully. When we do a design change, we sneak in say 10 into a batch of 100. Then if nothing comes back after 6-12 months, it’s OK. If the customer(s) have an issue we immediately replace the unit and tell them nobody else reported it. A customer who had a problem promptly rectified is more loyal to you than a customer who never had a problem in the first place – especially nowadays with sh1t customer service being the default position.
Of course we mark the odd ones with a little blob, and send them out to people buying just 1 unit, so they don’t all end up with one customer
Right now I am building 800 PCBs and 36 of them use a different CPU crystal…
