Flyer59 wrote:
Hundreds of pilots and passengers die every year because airplane engines in small aircraft fail
Source please! There simply aren’t ‘hundreds’ of deaths because of engine failure out there, even less so because of mechanical engine failure.
I find myself agreeing with Flyer59 here.
My plane has got a carburetted O360, one of the most bulletproof engines you can find. Yet, in 6 years of ownership, I have had to cancel flights several times due to engine problems, on a newly overhauled engine mind. Spark plug fouling is rampant, if one pilot forgets to pull the mixer after landing, the next one will have problems at run up, means taking out the plugs to clean them. Carb icing is a huge problem for that engine too. Starting is luck: 4 times I had to come from home because someone could not start the engine. One time it takes 5 x priming, one time 10x, after start up you need a lot of time until the CHT is ready for that mag check and every time you do the mag check you pray that it will be ok?
Sorry, if i had a car which required
- manual priming
- carburettor heat
- manual mixture control
- oil change every 50 hours of operation
- where I have to constantly watch the engine instruments for deviations from normal.
- an engine which needs a complete revision at more than hull value every 100k km
I would not bother. That is what my friends in BG expected from their Trabants, Moskwitch or Lada cars. Whenever you drive there, you see someone standing on the sideline with the canopy open trying to get these things back working. That is why they will buy the discarded cars of Western Europe, 10-20 years old but with proper engines.
When I flew the AN2, we had a 2nd pilot or mechanic on board and mandated on board just to keep the radial engine happy. Manual cowl flaps for cylinderhead temps, manual cowl flaps for the oil cooler, running that engine is a full time job for the guy in charge. Would I want that in my car? Hell no. Would I want it in my plane? Not either, thanks a lot.
My 15 year old Camry starts every time, no matter what the outside conditions are. The only thing that may happen is that you need external power when the battery gets old and then you buy one in the next magazine for 100 franks and are fine for 5 years. In 35 years of driving, I’ve had one engine related problem in a car while having driven close to half a million kilometers. In 500 hours of flying, I had certainly 10-15 instances where a bad mag check due to fouled plugs, alternator failure or other garbage stopped me from going flying in the first place.
State of the art is an engine which starts at the turn of a key, which keeps itself happy by regulating mixture and all other parameters like any normal car engine does today. Which can go from cold to max power in a few seconds whithout needing a tear down inspection thereafter.
The Thielert Diesels do just that, so do the Austroengines. You get in, switch the master on, turn the key and they come to life. When they first came online, people simply and understandably raved about them. Clearly, they are expensive to run due to the clutch exchanges, clearly, they had their teething proplems, like almost every new technology, but for the pilot, they are VERY easy to use.
Technology has evolved everywhere. I remember the start up sequence for the Caravelle or the TU154, it took skill and memorized procedures to start those engines. On an Airbus, you switch the APU bleed on, select the starter switch and put the fuel shut off cock to run, the rest is fully automated. I don’t hear anyone complain there. How many jet engines got ruined by someone firewalling the throttles, today, FADEC takes care of that. Again, I see nobody complain.
So why on earth do we have to fly with this kind of engine? Even if the basic concept of an air cooled opposed engine is still very viable, why the hell can’t we get proper accessories which help running that thing properly? Electronic ignition? Automixture?
The problem is the same yet again: The cost of certifying such an engine is prohibitive. That is why we are still using WW2 technology.
When Thielert came out at first, it was a huge success, there were lots of refits, people loved them, despite the clutch problems and other initial mishaps. If Thielert had not gone bancrupt out of a very bad case of incompetence in running their company, I am quite sure that the engine today would be in a huge majority of 150-160 hp airplanes, like it started out. I frevently hoped that by the time that my engine went to overhaul I could replace it with a diesel, I still hope that eventually there will be a 180-200 hp direct replacement engine for my airplane.
No, this is not a rant against stuff which has proven the test of time. There is a lot of things in aviation which originated in the 1950ties and still in one way or the other is state of the art. Nobody up to today has e.g made a more efficient wing profile than the one on the Commanche and the Mooneys just as one of many examples. But the engines are not it. Not by far.
While I by and large agree with your statements, spark plug fouling is in 90+% of the time down to incorrect operation, i.e. not leaning during taxi out to the run-up. And how, please, do you turn off the engine if, as you say, a pilot forgets to pull the mixer ?? No offense intended, but these are sloppy operating procedures, not the engine’s fault.
If Thielert had not gone bancrupt out of a very bad case of incompetence in running their company, I am quite sure that the engine today would be in a huge majority of 150-160 hp airplanes, like it started out
That may well be right, but you have to ask: why did it have the problems? (apart from the accounting fraud I mean)
The engine had problems because it had problems, not because it got bad luck.
In the meantime people with Lycos have been happily flying them, getting them overhauled for 20k or so (for the smaller ones).
On the whole, people are not stupid. Thielert managed to shift a lot of stuff to the FTOs and other high-use ops because they can make a case on the basis of the fuel saving. Private owners would have followed but (like a younger brother watching his older brother’s girlfriend problems 
) they had the opportunity to learn for free.
Diesels don’t offer enough reason for people to move to them. In Europe, you get
against which you have a higher maintenance cost of the Diamonds which according to info from owners pretty well offsets the fuel saving for private owners.
And there is no market in the USA because there is no fuel cost saving, etc. The DA42 should sell as being the only modern twin but the Thielert Experiment killed that market for a while.
I don’t want new technology for the sake of new technology. I want new technology when and because it makes sense. And I want the best solution for a problem without having to justify that the solution is old.
Exactly.
I know a guy who bought a brand new Cirrus – and the engine failed at the first flight with the company CFI. He got a new engine by Conti – which failed again after 200 hrs. If that is good enough for you, fine. I think that is terrible and that it is unacceptable.
That may be true but it is also not usual. Perhaps he did a Vx climb to FL200 and buggered it. Loads of pilots know nothing about engine management and aircraft systems, and the marketing on that model will attract these customers preferentially (an inevitable part of the process of opening up a new market segment, in any industry). Or there was something else going on e.g. work done by a particular incompetent firm or an individual.
My A&P tells me he rarely sees SR22 (non T) engines make 800hrs before needing new cylinders but 200hrs is obviously very unusual in correct operation.
No, it was on the checkout flight withe Company Instructor, and the engine just died a (typical) infant death. It is not a councedence that many experienced pilots will not fly a brand new engine over water …
It has nothing to do with the Cirrus, all the turbocharged piston engines tend to destroy their cylinders. But yes, with the Contis you have to be a bit more careful. That was the main reason i went for an NA.
My source for the information that hundreds of engines fail catastrophically every year: NTSB, national accident investigations of other countries. The engines are always the main source of trouble.
Everything else one could say was written by Mooney_Driver (we should make a party, we agree 100%!) ;-)
172driver wrote:
While I by and large agree with your statements, spark plug fouling is in 90+% of the time down to incorrect operation, i.e. not leaning during taxi out to the run-up. And how, please, do you turn off the engine if, as you say, a pilot forgets to pull the mixer ?? No offense intended, but these are sloppy operating procedures, not the engine’s fault.
I agree fully. Our procedure is to always lean the engine immediately after start up and after landing. After landing it gets forgotten sometimes, it has happened 3 times in the last year and several times before that. Every time thereafter we had foul plugs and the next guy had to either try to burn them free or, in one case, have them cleaned. And no, i did not mean the shut down procedure, sorry I did not make myself clear there, clearly you pull the mixer, but what I meant is that once you are clear of the runway to immediately lean the engine again for ground ops.
We have of course taken action and reminded our folks accordingly and so far there has not been a re-occurrence, but one day someone is going to forget to lean after landing (it always happened after a non-standard landing runway and complex taxi clearance) and it will happen again. The thing is: it doesn’t take long. A few minutes full rich after landing is enough! Clearly, most of the time you can burn the deposits off during the next run up, but it is uncomfortable and not nice for the pax.
What I am saying is, of course, with the necessary caution and care it won’t happen. But it is not state of the art that an engine needs to be babysit like that. I know for sure that if any car engine was like that, 50% of today’s drivers would not be able to handle them.
Aart wrote:
comfort (low vibrations of Diesels)
It has been mentioned here multiple times that Diesels have less vibrations than petrol engines. Since I have never had the occasion to fly one, I was just wondering why that is the case. From my experience with cars, I would rather expect the opposite. Is it because these engines run at higher RPMs and are geared?
Leaning during taxi is a good example. When was the last time you leaned your car when it was idling? While it is no big deal to do so it is a good symptom for how old fashioned the technology of these engines really is. Of course it is up to the indivudual to love these anachronisms, but modern technology is something else.
Peter wrote:
That may well be right, but you have to ask: why did it have the problems? (apart from the accounting fraud I mean)
If I remember right due to their very optimistic maintenance policy. Thielert included most of the maintenance up to TBO in the price of the engine. That was before they realized they’d have to exchange the clutch every 300 hours. That cost really made a massive dent in their pocketbook. Also they underestimated the cost of what else they would have to pick up.
Technically, it was the replacement intervall of 300 hours initially (I think it is 600 hrs by now or more) which drove costs through the roof. The general idea was not too bad: They wanted to avoid that like with normal engines you need a teardown after a sudden stoppage. But that did not work out as it should have. By now however, that problem is well under control, even though it is still a major cost factor.
Peter wrote:
Diesels don’t offer enough reason for people to move to them. In Europe, you get
add to that you get a very easy to use engine. I know several who either own or fly airplanes with those engines and they do love the ease of operation.
Peter wrote:
The DA42 should sell as being the only modern twin but the Thielert Experiment killed that market for a while.
The Thielert Bancruptcy, which was inevitable due to their incompetence in running the company, basically ruined the reputation of a product which up to that point had been an absolute hit. The horror for the owners that followed while Thielert was in administration did the rest. What I am saying though is that this was due to the conduct and the bancruptcy of the company, NOT by any factor because the engine was a bad product.
When Austroengine came along, everyone thought that Thielert/Continental would die. Well, they don’t, as the Austroengine is heavier and more expensive. I think now that Continental has taken over and guarantees the support as well as the higher TBR’s of the clutch and the engine, the CD engines will see a revival. As for the US, we now do have the engine decision by Mooney for the M10, which I think is the right decision, particularly as part of their market is the Chinese both civil and Air Force market. So that is the first OEM to create a new airplane around that engine. In the US, this has created quite a bit of interest yet again, also there the trainer market is pretty dried up. If the M10T for trainers and J as a 2-3 seat personal transport are a success, then I think the diesel might get quite a boost there.
Peter wrote:
Loads of pilots know nothing about engine management
Most drivers know NOTHING about engine management for their cars and yet manage to drive for most of their active life without hard failures. Why can’t we get engines for our airplanes which either have the neccessary safeguards built in or are strong enough to withstand the usual abuse (or even better a combination of the two). Engine management should be down to “On, Run, Off” without all the tinkering, CHT / TIT watching, mixing, shock cooling, and so on. Personally I think this should be the same for airplane engines. It would open capacity for other things, especcially in critical situations.
