If Korean automakers can offer 10 years / 100’000 miles warranty on the powertrain and be profitable it certainly doesn’t sound that farfetched.
I think you can buy a totally brand new Lyco.
I’d say something over half the new RVs built get brand new engines. There is a supply of used Lycomings coming out of scrapped Pipers, but it may be that as time goes on that will run out and more planes will get new engines. Also people are working RV construction into a bit of an art form, reaching to see who can build the nicest example. Nothing wrong with an overhauled O-360 (it’d be my choice from any aircraft engine available) but a new one probably appeals to that kind of builder.
Isn’t it totally amazing that this large market leader has a total of 17 engines in stock?
http://lycoming.com/Lycoming/PRODUCTS/EnginesInStock.aspx
And my favorite from their web site:
• Business Consulting Services – $300 / hour
That must be on the subject “how to survive for 50 years without any innovation at all”. They surely can ask premium rates there.
Achim arent you being a tad too hard? After all they do have to deal with the FAA, Liability attorneys, Stockholders, Board of Directors and CEO packages. Thats a lot to juggle and still stay solvent.
Why would Lycoming want to innovate, when they would not sell many more new engines, since the maximum addressable market is already too small and shrinking and research ROI 10 to 20 years out. It seems they are rather pragmatic, and business savvy. They focus on the right priorities, by increasing their production efficiency, thereby achieving enough financial cushion over a longer period of time that pays for smaller innovations. I don’t like it, but one cannot blame them without looking naïve.
Only that when (not if) the diesel engines are ready, they will get wiped out. Continental are a little bit smarter in that they are hedging for the day with the technology they bought and licensed.
The approach of doing R&D only to the degree necessary to keep the business going is what got the traditional US industry into trouble. What can be done, has to be done otherwise somebody else will do it. For some reason, you still can get away with this approach in some sectors of the US economy (look at the toilets, same 1950s models until today) but not forever.
Im not sure how much competition there could be when one corp owns both engine manufacturers and both aircraft manufacturers, Cessna and Beechcraft. Im confident both use the same manufactures (3rd world subcontractors) for mass of scale economy. Ergo the crap products with lax quality control. As long as the paperwork is ok and nobody has a accident the FAA stays out of the equation. So if you have to overhaul your engine 3 times before the TBO is reached your on your own with the bills.
Before a solution can be found we first must understand the cause. Brave new world.
Continental are owned by the Chinese government, Lycoming by the Textron low-tech conglomerate that also owns Cessna and now the remainders of Beechcraft.
Continental also own Thielert and have an SMA license. Thielert/Centurion/whatever are busy test flying a 6 cylinder Mercedes, that is going to be an interesting product, the 2.0s is a reliable product with very good performance characteristics. I am not very optimistic about Continental’s ability to make something out of the license of the first generation SMA but at least they rather active in modern aero engine development.
Lycoming supposedly do something with the old Italian VM engine, for some drone project but there is not a lot of information about it and it doesn’t sound like they have any GA plans.
So I’d be inclined to say that Continental are somewhat alive whereas Lycoming has the smell of the Soviet Union in 1989. Even their IE2 seems kind of abandoned.
The problem these people have is that avgas is a much better fuel in every respect than avtur, and in the USA the price advantage doesn’t really exist (to GA).
So their diesel work is
So I would not hold your breath on getting much out of this anytime soon.
Also the historical record on the pricing of diesel retrofits is that they are priced for the 500hr/year FTO market, not for most private pilots. Once Marketing gets stuck into this, this will always happen. The USA will never accept diesels, which leaves various small markets which are mostly devoid of capital.
BTW if Lyco have only 18 engines in stock, I’d call that “lean manufacturing”, “just in time”… any more buzzwords anyone? 
Gosh there must be a way to squeeze “cloud” in there somewhere
Building an engine takes 1 man only about 1-2 days.
