Bill Freeman:
I strongly disagree with your statement that there is any material difference
(read improvement in either design or reliability) in the engine series you
cited. ie E-185, E-225 and O-470.
Do you want to discuss the IO-520?
As an addendum I recently priced a set of piston rings for a Lycoming O-290
at a local repair station. They wanted $1,000.00 for them and a wait of 3
weeks.
There is a racing supplier which produces one off rings sets called Superseal
to your requirements for about $60.00 per hole. Takes 4 days for delivery.
Did not bother to check a local auto supplier for the price of 4 cylinder
ring sets.
Hank Huddleston
Hank, are those Cummins diesel engine valves really interchangeable with
the Lycoming valves?
Paul Lamar
How much change is requred to please you? The engines were redesigned
enough to get a new designation, so your original comment is wrong-
they were not designed in 1935. The folks in 1935 would have LOVEd
to have had any of these designs, as they were one to two decades in
the future..
Depending on your standard, ANY piston engine could be identical to the
original Daimler gas engine, and therefore useless?? As far as actually
first production, I stand by the late 40s and fifties as the era of all these
engines.
I'm sure Lyc doesn't stock or make the O-290 rings any more. Try to
buy rings for a '59 Ford from the dealer. The last O-290s went into
TriPacers, IIRC. I'm sure the setup cost alone for a set of forged
rings is horrendous. The O-290 (like the Ford 292 V8) is not
really supportable anymore.
Ask your racing supplier to provide the FAA certification, testing, engineering,
staff, paper trail and all the other crappola that Lyc and Cont have to
to for certified engines. It costs a ton to keep a 3-4 dozen engineers
on staff, plus testing, paperwork, insurance, etc. Certainly a small
specialty
shop with no paper trail, no engineering, no insurance can do it cheaply.
I dare you to tell the guy you are going to use it in an airplane.
All an excellent reason to have a homebuilt aircraft where you can personally
take on the challenges and risks using your own personal stds, not some large
institutionalized stds. The general public does not understand any of this
and
insists on this certification process. We are very lucky that we can avoid
a lot of this and do what WE choose to. Like using Cummins valves if
we can make them fit - a great idea if it works.
For example, note the prices of the two recently certified "homebuilt"
aircraft. I think they cost $250K or so, where the homebuilt version
can/could be made for less than half. Production, engineering and certification
are expensive. Homebuilding is where WE can do lots of our own
development and testing and save a lot of the stifling paperwork and
stuff which cost a lot, as long as we assume the risk ourselves. We
all have chosen that path and I think it is a good one.
Bill
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