Silvaire wrote:
I don’t have much against them except that my long experience with Bing CV carbs leads me to think they aren’t right for an aircraft engine
The very reason we are changing to EFI on our tow plane 
It still has to be proven that the EFI is better though, time will tell.
Fact is that more and more European countries want to ban gasoline and even diesel in the long term (some are talking about the mid 2020ties, but that is polito bs I suppose) and they mean it. Car manufacturers here are in a frenzy to develop electric cars. I would not think that GA has time until 2030 or much less 40 to find a solution as once no new gasoline cars are produced, demand will fall and eventually gasoline will be banned altogether.
Diesel engines are the obvious answer and GA can not afford to sit on their hands as usual and trust in the oil companies keeping Avgas alive if most gasoline refineries are shut. They won’t be able to shut down Jet A1. Even today, Jet A1 or Avtur as it’s called in the UK is the one fuel which is available everywhere where airplanes are used.
Obviously however there is the crux that the current diesel engines are in fact automotive engines and with a ban of those vehicles,eventually these will disapear. But that time horizon is much longer. I don’t currently see anyone outside Europe going bananas over electro cars to the extent that they wish to ban gasoline.
@Mooney_Driver, this too shall pass. You described the current European situation accurately in an earlier post – it’s just to distract people from the Diesel-specific scandal and make it about all IC engines instead. After people have moved on from that, the pendulum will swing back as another Euro drama takes over 
Silvaire wrote:
After people have moved on from that, the pendulum will swing back as another Euro drama takes over
Actually, this is not so much about the Diesel scandal, diesel is only in the sidelines. Several countries have actually initiated legislation to the effect that new fossile fuel cars may no longer be sold after a certain day x. At the moment, they are not yet saying that from day y on existing fossile fuel cars will be disallowed to go on, but it is implied that this day will be around x plus 10 years.
For me, this would be a reason to finally emigrate to a more reasonable country. Adn of course nobody knows if in the countries concerned there will not be an European version of Trump emerging when the citizens get their say at the ballots, but I would not hold my breath. And to rely on someone like that to keep GA flying…. I don’t want to think that far.
LeSving wrote:
It still has to be proven that the EFI is better though, time will tell.
I’ve had absolute pressure sensor failures, throttle position sensor failures, and mass flow sensor failures on EFI systems, all of which made the engine suddenly unserviceable, so it’d be interesting to see how they managed the EFI design towards an acceptable failure modes and effects analysis.
LeSving wrote:
What is Europe anyway? I know Norway, Scandinavia and here the situation is:I don’t agree with your assessment of “the situation”.Fly VFR day → microlight, LSA, VLA
Fly VFR day/night, IFR, touring → experimental
Enthusiast → some vintage civilian or military, or less mainstream experimental/microlight.
Lack of imagination → old spam can C-172, Cherokee, Mooney …
Loads of money → Cirrus, DA-42, piston helicopter
Larger loads of money → TP, buizjet, turbine helicopter, Mig, Starfighter …
Airborne_Again wrote:
I don’t agree with your assessment of “the situation”.
Didn’t think so either The point is that Lycomings are serviceable for all future, and so are Rotaxes. For both engines there exists an entire industry of aftermarket parts and pieces. They will never die. What will happen to the old DA-42s when they are in need of new engines ? Is anyone willing to pay €2-300k on a 20-30 year old DA-42 to get it airworthy due to TBR? Also, a Cirrus, now matter how old, will never replace a C-172 as a trainer or become the bread and butter club plane for pilots flying 10h each year. There aren’t many C-172 sold each year anymore, and there are limits to how long they will last.
IMO the current diesels will be a short lived thing in GA. They aren’t designed to be maintained, and are way too expensive and complicated to keep running. They will never offer any value when the aircraft eventually steps down to the spam can/enthusiast category, and are utterly irrelevant for the two first categories. They cannot serve the lower end of the market, like the used Cessnas etc have done up to now. Something else will have to fill that market, and that is experimentals and microlights. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit that an aftermarket industry starts emerging that will replace the diesels in old DA-42s with IO360s,
LeSving wrote:
Something else will have to fill that market
To a degree that’s already happening with the LSAs here in the US, which appear to be increasingly used for ab initio training. The thing with the diesels is that outside the US AVGAS availability increasingly is a real issue and they could thrive there. At the price points mentioned in this thread, I do have my doubts, however.
172driver wrote:
The thing with the diesels is that outside the US AVGAS availability increasingly is a real issue and they could thrive there
Theoretically – yes, but private GA is a recreational activity, 99% at least. Where there is no fuel, you won’t go. If there is no fuel at your home base, you fix fuel yourself. A trailer with a tank and pump is not rocket science, and fuel is cheap if you fix it yourself, cheaper than if Shell or BP should do it for you. The “other” GA use turbines, whether it is helicopters or buizjets. Here in Norway we can use MOGAS, and pay approximately JET-A1 price anyway.
There are two things that can turn this around:
I seriously cannot see any of those things happening. I hoped the Gemini diesel would materialize, but nothing has happened the last 1 1/2 year, it’s dead. Then there is the “other”, the Lycoming replacement, that has been going at it for a century, cant remember the name.
LeSving wrote:
Didn’t think so either
I’m not necessarily disagreeing with the diesel part.
