Doing these yourself (as I do) is thus a big saving, even if I pay somebody to assist. Presumably that is also authorised on the diesels?
Peter, I thought you were on N-reg. why do you do G-reg 50 hr checks?
Achim, I know what you say on Mercedes car engines not using any oil.. Indeed, on the Thielert it comes out the breathers. Shows up behind a vent on the bottom side of the cowlings.
On most aircraft, the 50 hour check is not much more than an oil and filter change...and these need to be done every 50 hours anyway, irrespective of the letters on the fuselage. People who want to do extra good to their engine change oil more frequently.
I think that's about it... N-reg and G-reg are the same. ~ 6 man-hours. It's not a bad earner for a company doing a fixed price service for say €600+VAT, plus consumables...
Iridium plugs (Tempest URHM38S) last about the life of the engine, with no apparent wear.
Also, on a G-reg you have the 150hr check. Very few private owners reach 150hrs (airborne time is what should be logged) before reaching the Annual (I did it once or twice in 11 years) but it does catch a lot of syndicates, and it is expensive.
Just read this in the CPA newsletter:
CESSNA 182 JT-A HAS ENGINE FAILURE – OFF AIRPORT LANDING
Cessna’s prototype 182 JT-A suffered engine problems Wednesday evening and had an off airport landing near Cheney Lake west of Wichita. The pilot was the only person on board and was not injured. This prototype was the test bed for the SMA Diesel engine that Cessna is certifying in the 182 as the 182JT-A. No details of the problems have been released and so far Cessna, the FAA and the NTSB are being as quiet as church mice about what happened.
Either they are having a real run of bad luck with their testing these years, or they are doing something wrong. The C162 testing was a nightmare for Cessna (and the product failed in the market and is now pratically dead). And now this. In these early stages of the flight testing, wouldn't it be wise to stay within gliding distance of an airfield? Sure would avoid such bad media as nobody would ever know...
In these early stages of the flight testing
The TCDS is expected to be approved any day so I wouldn't call that "early stages of flight testing" 
We don't know what happened, it was an experimental aircraft and they could have tried something that didn't work out.
The C162 is just not a great airplane and the brand name alone doesn't help. Piper stopped their experiment (reselling the Czech Sports Cruiser) rather fast. The microlight market is not a market that is waiting for new companies to step in.
The C400 is a disaster though. They had the worst problem imaginable: structural integrity failure and they are having a hard time recovering from that. I wonder what stops them from putting that project in the trash can. They have no chance against Cirrus with this product.
The TCDS is expected to be approved any day
Well, they normally start saying this when it is really actually about 6 to 18 months away...;-)
Engine certification is little to do with the reliability of the engine.
A while ago one engine shop explained to me the requirements. They are staggeringly lax. It is something like 150hrs on a dyno, of which only a bit is at max power.
At no time is anything remotely resembling the TBO required to be demonstrated. I was once told that any 2000hr-TBO engine was bench run for 2000hrs at the max rated continuous power, but that is completely false.
This is how we got the Thielert engine saga, with many FTOs with say 5 x DA40 would at certain times actually have 1 or 2 flying and the rest grounded.
That's why I say only time, and heavy usage over time_ by pilots willing to go public with issues_, is going to deliver the verdict on any new engine (or anything else for that matter). And almost nobody will go public with problems because the dealer will just chop their head off (no warranty and have to sue at every step). FTO usage is a poor indicator since they usually keep their mouths firmly shut. I went public with some TB20 issues (avionics mainly) and got cut off fast.
