Paul,
In case you have not heard, another one of Bud Warren's gear boxes failed
and caused a fatality  It was a very nice looking turbo LS1 installation in
a Glassair 3.

Here is a link to the crash:
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/**44733966/ns/us_news-life/<http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/44733966/ns/us_news-life/

Here is a link to the discussion on the canard forum:
http://forum.canardaviation.**com/showthread.php?t=5706<http://forum.canardaviation.com/showthread.php?t=5706

and here is a video of the aircraft taken days before the incident by Mark
Steele:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?**v=q4ZV6NPxeq4<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4ZV6NPxeq4

Very Sad.  Not a good record for Bud's gear boxes and a clutch.


--
David Leonard

Turbo Rotary RV-6 N4VY
http://N4VY.RotaryRoster.net <http://n4vy.rotaryroster.net/**
http://RotaryRoster.net <http://rotaryroster.net/

Not necessarily the gear box. They both also had Chevy LS1 engines.
That is a very low duty cycle engine with cast iron crank, rods and
cast pistons. Many Chevy V8 powered experimental aircraft have
crashed in the last twenty years with all kinds of gear boxes.

I had gone to OSH just about every year up until this year
and each year yet another new Chevy V8 project was touted. A year or
two later and they were gone. People get seduced by the promise
of 400 HP when in reality the engine is designed for 40 HP.

I am the last person in the world that will admit an automotive
piston engine is up to aircraft duty cycle requirements. As time goes on
the automotive piston engine is better designed to get as
much cost out as possible and still fit the automotive duty cycle.
Automotive piston engine will catastrophically fail without warning
around 300 hours.

The reason the FAA demands an annual inspection on certified aircraft
engines
is to detect incipient exhaust valve failure. The reason a TBO is assigned
by the FAA as experience has shown that particular aircraft engine will go
that long without a major part catastrophically failing other than an
exhaust
valve or two.

Here is an article written by Don Sherman a former student of mine.

http://www.rotaryeng.net\DS-**smith-art.pdf

* Smithsonian Air & Space magazine article "Power Struggle" by Don
Sherman, January 1997, page 72. Excellent ten page  article (with
many pictures) about auto engines in airplanes. A brief history of
all auto engines in airplanes and a more detailed history of the
twenty year, twenty million dollar  development of the Chevy V8
based, all aluminum Orenda liquid cooled aircraft engine. At this
time (Jan 1997) and well after the article was written the engine
failed its FAA 150 hour full power certification test due to a
crankshaft problem after 20 years of very expensive development.
It was finally certified in 1998 by Transport Canada.

Extensive changes have been made to the basic Chevy big block engine
including a parallel cooling system with dual coolant pumps as
opposed to the serial cooling system with single pump as typically
found in automotive engines. Parallel cooling systems were
considered to be essential in the 1920's on liquid cooled aircraft
engines.

Engine length is almost everything to a car designer. Engine cooling
compromises are made by simezing the cylinder walls in automotive
engines. Crankshaft life at high continuous power is compromised by
shortening the length, leaving too little room for adequate size
journal fillet radii. In my opinion this engine will not be
successful until it is re-designed from a clean sheet of paper to be
a real aircraft engine. If that happens they might as well go to a
horizontal opposed configuration for lighter weight.

Orenda was in the process of moving the project to Nova Scotia
and injecting another 32 million dollars of mostly Canadian
government money. They where also attempting to market the engine to
the homebuilt market. I did not expect many takers at over $100K per
engine.

Several years ago Lancair gave up after spending a lot of money installing
the engine in a special airplane called the Lancair Tigress.
The engine and the Tigress were donated to the EAA museum as
a tax write off.

The Orenda company is now bankrupt.

"Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

It is not for nothing that real aircraft piston engines cost $20,000
and up. You are paying for the best materials and manufacturing techniques
available. They are designed to last 1500 to 2000 hours in aircraft
service.

It is just unadulterated luck for us that the Wankel is far more robust
than it needs to be for automotive use and can live in aircraft service.

Paul Lamar

Does a build center exist somewhere in the United States where you can get
hands on help learning to recondition your Wankel Rotary Engine for
installation in an Experimental Aircraft?

Seems like the largest danger with the Wankel Rotary Engine is knowledge.
Once you have a baseline of knowledge, and continue to maintain the engine
as trained at a build center, it will eliminate many of the normal dangers
of a piston engine such as the Chevy LS engine.

GFCurtis Jr.

Not that I know about.
The cheapest way is to buy a junk engine and take it apart yourself.
The best thing about it is there is no machining of any kind required
to rebuild them. Once you take one apart you discover how easy it is.
I think Ed Carver will back me up on that as he has been in it
for less than a year as I recall.

You can download free shop manuals here.

http://foxed.ca/foxed/index.php?page=rx7manual

Several videos are available. Mazdatrix sells them as I recall.

http://www.mazdatrix.com/

Tracy Crook sells one too. Real World Solutions.

Go to any fair sized city and ask around for who fixes Mazda rotary
engines and go there and hang out.

Put "How to overhaul a Mazda rotary" in the youtube search engine you
will get 264 results.

This one has been watched by 20,000 people.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijJeUk_GqiI

There is no cheap way to eliminate the dangers of the Chevy LS
short of replacing all the parts with aircraft quality materials
and parts. All the knowledge in the world will not help.
It is not cheap to do that. The endurance racers spend as
much as $100,000 on a Chevy V8 to get it to last one 24 hour
race.

The Orenda Chevy based V8 got up to a 1200 hour TBO when it was
finally certified after 30 years of very expensive R&D
and all parts where changed with aircraft quality parts
including the block. At that point they were charging
$100,000 for them.

When I was involved in road racing we would get two hours
out of them and that was it. Almost every part was cracked
including the block. The competitive NASCAR racers get one
new engine per 500 mile 3 hour race. Many laps are done under
the yellow flag.

The stock Mazda RX8 engine on the other hand is raced 10 races
a year for 3 or 4 years without being touched in the Star Mazda
open wheel series. More Mazda rotaries have won more 24 hour races
than any other brand.

Paul Lamar