Did you fly with your UL 350 yet?
I have a plane with an early (2009) UL260i. It has only approx 220hrs but I have had to do some maintenance as various parts had oil leaks, although this was a pretty cheap task because UL provide the specs and dimensions all of the normal parts such as O rings, washers, sealants, bolts etc… so you can buy them from anywhere as cheap as you like. While I was at it, I replaced all the fuel tubing in the plane with Speedflow teflon hose, which works really well. Previously it used normal rubber/steel braided Speedflow hose, and the fuel smell permeated the hose so the cabin would smell of fuel when you opened the door at the start of the day. The fuel smell is now 100% gone since switching to teflon.
IMO it has noticeably less grunt than a similar Rotax 100hp plane. I do have a wooden Hercules prop though which I’m sure doesn’t help, and I plan to add a Duc Swirl R 2 prop in order to get better performance out of the engine. One thing I can say about a UL compared to a Rotax is that the UL powered plane is much, much harder to sell. I wouldn’t own another one purely on this basis.
I’ve only had about 20hrs run time on it myself, but besides the oil leak problems (mostly to do with errors by the previous owner/builder of the plane) it seems to run nicely. It’s very smooth and just starts/stops “on the button”, like a car, regardless of if the engine is hot or cold. I’m sure the engine will be great until such time as I have an electrical issue, then it will probably be a nightmare, but we’ll see.
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172driver wrote:
Could it be that they left the ‘CNC look’ on purpose to increase the surface area for cooling
Maybe. It does indeed increase the surface area by a factor 1.5 perhaps.
LeSving wrote:
They could easily have gone over with a much finer final cut as is normally done, but I guess this looks cooler It looks like it is treated in some way nonetheless, polished but leaving the “CNC look”.
Beautiful looking engine ! Could it be that they left the ‘CNC look’ on purpose to increase the surface area for cooling ? It looks ‘grooved’ on the pics.
Only electric AFAIK.
What about CS propeller, is it possible?
Peter wrote:
The crankcase looks CNC machined.
Very much so. They could easily have gone over with a much finer final cut as is normally done, but I guess this looks cooler It looks like it is treated in some way nonetheless, polished but leaving the “CNC look”. As an odd fun fact, the fins of the cylinder heads make really nice sound like a glockenspiel. It also has the camshaft on the correct side
Compared with my Aerovee (2200cc, 70 hp with MOGS 95), the UL350i is 3500cc and 118 hp. The weight is exactly the same. I met one of the Lancair dudes a few days ago, He is seriously considering getting a 6 cylinder variant to replace his Lycoming 230 (I think he got). Replacing his 230 with a UL520, and he gets 200 HP with the same weight, actually a bit less.
Nice looking engine. I wish Lyco etc did the same sort of thing. Instead they, and most overhaul shops, just assemble it, stand back, and spray grey paint over the whole thing
The crankcase looks CNC machined.
It arrived today after a couple of days in the Norwegian customs office free shipping from Belgium.
My first impression is WOW. The quality of the craftsmanship is amazing, and every little bit is included (wires, oil tubing/cooler, fuel system, ECU etc etc, even baffling). It has to stay in the box for a while until I get the engine mount from Kaolin, and later the propeller from Prince. Going to Belgium in June for installation and maintenance course (also free )
As a man who never had any experience of motorcycles I live and learn. In fact I had thought that the only desmodromic valve gears that existed in my lifetime were on some exotic Mercedes engines in the early ’50s.
