Light aircraft crash at Heck Field 27/01/26

[facthunter]

Note. I didn't see Turbo's post before I Posted. Nev

[Thruster88]

I like Subaru. I have built a couple of "experimentals", and EA82 powered vw based off road buggy and an EJ22 powered 36metre boom crop sprayer, also have a current model Subaru BRZ with the FA24 engine, great car.

 

Subaru engine in an aircraft is a definite no for me, not because of the core engine, it is all the other stuff that is needed.  This is a good article that explains that and some history. 

 

What happened to the Subaru Aircraft Engine? - JdFinley.com

JDFINLEY.COM

---

Where have they gone? When will new ones start? Why the movement dying?

 

 

[Ian]

17 hours ago, onetrack said:

If you ever watched a Ford production line manufacturing valves, you'd never buy another Ford again, they punch them out by the hundreds a minute. This is a critical part in any engine.

There is nothing wrong with a process which makes valve quickly, consistently to a standard. If the parts aren't failing in production they're good enough.

 

Lycoming has issued recalls for defective crankshafts due to poor quality controls in their subcontractors many of which failed in flight prior to the recall. https://www.lycoming.com/content/service-bulletin-no-566

 

Sintered components are cheaper because they need less machining and waste less material. While there have been failures of sintered component there have been many sintered gears and conrods which have lasted the lifetime of engines. If an engine component is designed or manufactured poorly it will likely fail in production, it doesn't matter if it is sintered or forged.

17 hours ago, onetrack said:

At the end of the day, there is no such thing as a cheap and reliable aircraft engine. Aircraft engines cost serious money because of their extensive levels of QC, extensive testing, quality materials, and designs that are specific to aircraft, to ensure that an engine failure in flight, minimises the risk of the engine failure turning into a major disaster. An EFATO is something that keeps every pilot awake at night.

At then end of the day GA aircraft engines are 1950 technology and it shows. The alloys they're made from are no longer the best and many of the failures we see due to elevated temperatures are completely avoidable. The technology that's use for ignition is antiquated and unreliable compared to the automotive industry, the highlight of the current technology is roller lifters, introduced into the automotive industry in the 70s and 80s.
Knock sensing, efficient fuel injection, automated advance, unleaded fuels, near zero oil use, low particulate emissions the list goes on an on.

 

The controls introduced for safety resulted in an industry bereft of innovation due to a high barrier of entry.

 

Ask yourself when's the last time you heard of a car engine with carbon build up or burnt valve seats, or low compression or swallowing a valve. Or how about the relative merits of using silk thread to an adjunct for effective seals in a modern production vehicle.

 

 

 

[facthunter]

Plenty of improvements since 1950. Materials and processes. Some heads are forged and then Milled Just because they Look the same doesn't mean they are. Nev

[Ian]

25 minutes ago, facthunter said:

You should be talking of clearances, 

Fair point however it's actually a combination of the two. Modern vehicle engines are built to far higher tolerances and the efficacy of liquid cooling allows the use of very low clearances in engine operation from start to shutdown. Alloy choices such as hyper eutectic alloys for pistons have low expansion rates so you don't have pistons slapping and leaking when the engines cold.

27 minutes ago, facthunter said:

Liquid cooled engines run cooler than optimum for efficiency and Play up more in hot Ground temp environments.

Debateable. Air cooling is thermodynamically more efficient, however liquid cooling provides far greater control and allows the transfer of heat from the engine to areas where is it easier to push into the environment. In reality it's a design issue, and a particular design is either effective or not.

 

36 minutes ago, facthunter said:

The also have the drag of radiators

Well design radiator drag is lower than air cooling. This was demonstrated numerous times in WW2. But it required significant domain expertise to do this effectively.
 

 

37 minutes ago, facthunter said:

vulnerability of Leaks and extra complexity, COST and weight and need to check Hoses, radiator Mounts  water Pump seals etc

Yes there are risks associated with extra complexity however there are also benefits. Current airplane engines have numerous defects which have been designed out of modern automotive engines.

They're also almost an order of magnitude cheaper as a rule.

[facthunter]

Yes they are mass Produced and FAR better than Older engines ever were and relatively Much cheaper trouble free (Till your battery goes flat  and all the Management disappears and they have the vehicle for a week) and MORE SPECIFIC to the USE they were designed for. Not anything else Particularly, as time goes on. Nev

[BrendAn]

There is a successful car engine in a certified aircraft.

The tecnam diesel uses a Mercedes diesel 

[facthunter]

That's news. Are they very Popular?

[BrendAn]

19 minutes ago, facthunter said:

That's news. Are they very Popular?

Not sure. There was a video on YouTube the other day. I will try and find it again.

 

[skippydiesel]

1 hour ago, turboplanner said:

 

Stationary Engines are designed for constant load application. They are started, run at a constant governed rpm and often have a constant power demand, such as a bore pump.

Speculation: There are not many engines designed specifically for generators/bore pumps. Most will be the same engine used in a range of commercial applications eg truck, dozer, tractors, marine, etc

1 hour ago, turboplanner said:

 

Aircraft engines are designed for constant load application. The application is usually a shirt climb, a long cruise and a short descent.

 

I think you are mistaken.

 

Take of an Climb are high power/load - Cruse is constant, at whatever power selection - Descent is low power.

A car, much like an aircraft will Accelerate (high load/power) - Cruise (constant) - Slow.(low)

The principal difference between an aircraft engine  V a ground vehicle,  is the frequency of power/load and duration requirements within one run cycle.

 

A secondary difference is how the power is delivered. Ground vehicles tend towards rapid engine acceleration, so have design (short stroke) fuel delivery and ignition systems configured to facilitate this requirement and gear boxes. Aircraft engines usually have  fairly  "lazy" slow accelerating engines , with a narrow optimum ignition bands (like a mower) & fuel delivery (most aircraft will be delivering close to full power at start of  Ground Role) and no gear box (Rotax a possible acception) . Rotax aircraft engines (high revving/gear box) have much more in common with ground based engines than most. 

 

Then there is  the power required to maintain level Cruise. A car, supported against gravity by wheels, will have a relativly low power demand. An aircraft, relative to the car, will have significantly higher requirement. 

 

However, a vehicle towing a trailer in Cruise will have greater similarity to an aircraft power demand in Crusie - the trailer imposing constant  increased aerodynamic, weight & rolling resistance.😈

 

Edited Monday at 10:19 PM by skippydiesel

[BrendAn]

https://youtu.be/trDivLehPaA?si=ERh6B1QX0NlkM_OR

[onetrack]

Quote

Speculation: There are not many engines designed specifically for generators/bore pumps. Most will be the same engine used in a range of commercial applications eg truck, dozer, tractors, marine, etc

Wrong. Caterpillar have 7 specific categories of "engine application" - industrial, automotive (on-highway), marine, tractor, agricultural, power generation, and firefighting.

 

Each engine application, despite using the same basic engine, can have multiple dozens of subtle design changes and different internal components - and vastly different power ratings, RPM ranges, and fuel settings, and even engine timing.

I've seen the same basic Cat engine have 17 different crankshafts alone, depending on application. Conrods are different, fuel pumps are different, injectors are different, cylinder heads are different, valves are different materials and part numbers.

Camshafts have different profiles dependent on the RPM operating ranges. 50Kva gensets have to run at a maximum of 1500RPM, whilst some of the on-highway engines run at 3200RPM. Some engines have oil cooled pistons, some don't.

Automotive and tractor engine have governors with up to 10% droop. Genset governors run at a maximum of 3% droop to keep voltages within specified ranges under varying loads.

 

The list goes on and on, and every major engine power unit manufacturer has a different system of identifying their different engines and applications. Cummins have CPL - Control Parts List, a list of the specific internal components used in every one of their engines.

Cat use "Arrangement numbers". You acquire and use the parts book applicable to the engine "Arrangement number", or you're working blind, and looking for engine damage with incompatible components.

Lister (Petter-Lister) use "Build number". There is a number on the engine serial number plate that advises exactly which components went into that engine, even to the direction that it runs (CW or CCW), and the application for which it was designed.

 

You are showing ignorance and an overwhelming belief in your own "knowledge", which is different to the manufacturers advice and systems.

 

Edited Monday at 11:22 PM by onetrack

[Arron25]

1 hour ago, BrendAn said:

There is a successful car engine in a certified aircraft.

The tecnam diesel uses a Mercedes diesel 

And Diamonds that first used them were out of the air for Years..

Had one sit on the strip here, as they were not allowed to just replace the engines with something 'normal'

It was internal piston cooling that failed in design... pretty sure resolved now.

[BrendAn]

12 minutes ago, Arron25 said:

And Diamonds that first used them were out of the air for Years..

Had one sit on the strip here, as they were not allowed to just replace the engines with something 'normal'

It was internal piston cooling that failed in design... pretty sure resolved now.

According to the above video. 

Continental are building the engine from scratch now. Still based on mercedes car engine.

[Thruster88]

Thielert Centurion - Wikipedia

EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG

 

[skippydiesel]

Onetrack

 

"You are showing ignorance and an overwhelming belief in your own "knowledge", which is different to the manufacturers advice and systems."

 

Try not to make judgements of people you don't know - You are demonstrating your ignorance, in more way than one , in the above statement

 

"Each engine application, despite using the same basic engine, can have multiple dozens of subtle design changes and different internal components - and vastly different power ratings, RPM ranges, and fuel settings, and even engine timing."

 

The above statement is of course correct and supports my contention that IC engines are for the most just that.

The tweeks you refer to, are to optimise a given engine, for a given use, its still the same basic design as all the other "subtle" variants in it's "family".

Tweeks are the norm for many engine families - eg Rotax 912 80hp - 914 115hp- essential the same 3 engines. 6 cylinder Cummins (forget the family) were used in trucks, marine & all sorts of industrial applications - same engine.

With the exception of engines that are used for application like pumps/generators /agriculture (almost constant power demand) all engines are subject to similar power changes through an operating cycle ie TO /accelerate -high power, Cruse - constant power, Descend/slow - low power. Its the frequency that differs not the cycle.

It could be argued even pump/gen/agricultural engines must accelerate to full required power and slow when shut down, however the relative time at each end of the cycle is so short as to have little relevance to the power demand.

 

The often used argument that aircraft engines are diffrent to automotive because they run at  near constant power is demonstrably incorrect - which is what  I said/illustrated.

 

If you were to argue that aircraft engines must be designed & maintained ti a higher standard, than automotive, to reduce the potentially catastrophic result of failure, I would agree with you. However  its is obvious that certain automotive engines can be successfully "tweaked" to performer reliably in an aircraft.

😈

[danny_galaga]

1 hour ago, skippydiesel said:

Speculation: There are not many engines designed specifically for generators/bore pumps. Most will be the same engine used in a range of commercial applications eg truck, dozer, tractors, marine, etc

 

Most cars are doing what, 110kmh if travelling long distances. You would agree that's their constant load? That's maybe 20% power. Big difference to an aircrafts constant load. I had a girlfriend who used to commute between kunnanarra and Darwin. She was nuts. She drove her Hyundai excel at 160-170 all that distance. Now that load has got be be closer to an aircrafts constant load. When she'd get home, you could smell the hot oil and the engine block paint burning. I'm extremely confident she would have blown it up after not too many more trips but she ended up hitting a cow. How she survived that I don't know.

[skippydiesel]

28 minutes ago, danny_galaga said:

You would agree that's their constant load? That's maybe 20% power. Big difference to an aircrafts constant load. 

I think you misunderstand  me- I tried to be  careful with my use of language.

 

The often used, dismissal of auto engines, for use in aircraft, is that the auto engine is not designed for a constant power application. 

 

Aircraft do not operate at constant power, any more than auto engines ie the power is adjusted by the operator for diffrent stages. At a constant power, yes! for one part of the stage, Cruise.

 

Sure their power use cycle differs in its application & frequency  - with the exception of aircraft that spend most of their operating life in the circuit (more like a town car), the Cruise (low constant power) tends to be longer relative to the TO/Climb (high) & Descent (low) power bit like a car towing a caravan on a freeway.

 

As I pointed out - Ground based vehicles are generally supported against the effect of gravity on wheels. This means they do not need to expend energy to stay aloft, as an aircraft must, instead most of the engines energy is devoted to delivering  horizontal movement. So in Cruise (not towing anything) the engine can "loaf" delivering just enough power to mainatine speed. An aircraft in Cruise, will usually have the power reduced in Cruise (just like a car) but must still deliver sufficient energy, to forward motion/speed, to stay aloft, in addition to its assigned Cruise speed.

 

Ground vehicles are subject to constant changes in slope. Aircraft tend not to be (unless doing aerobatics), So ground based vehicles will have frequent changes in power to mainatine a contestant speed - this is likly to be detrimental to a long service life as heat generated, likly to fluctuate (cooling/expanding) along with power demand. Liquid cooling will assist in reducing this effect but can not be 100% effective.

 

Ground based engines, that spend relatively long periods in work, (trucks, taxi's, etc) often have remarkably long service lives due to near constant operating temperature. This suggests the other argument (short operating life), against auto engines in aircraft, is also based on urban myth.

 

I think you will agree, that there are  significant number of auto - aircraft engine conversions, that undermine the traditional argument against such  application.

That the auto engine is usually "tweaked" (Onetrack) does not change the fact that the engine is at its core the same engine. 

 

Tweaking is no diffrent from say shortening the oil change/service regime or removing unnecessary (to aircraft) accessories/fitting, adding a gear reduction, changing the ignition timing, to better reflect the duty. 

 

One one more speculation; For a truly successful auto conversion, a gearbox  will be required so that engine & prop can operate at their optimum rpm. this is where the power to weight argument against auto engines comes in - this can also be dismissed -  example Rotax.

 

Personally I would prefer to fly behind an engine designed for my aircraft. Trying to "tweak" an automotive engine to have similar performance/reliability, may be doable but why bother? The "tweaking" likly to raise the cost (time & $$) to something not to dissimilar to a dedicated aero engine. Once done there may be savings in parts, fuel economy performance smooth, quiet operation, feeling of achievement, etc ???

 

😈

 

 

[facthunter]

Lycoming build a lot of different versions of any sized engine. Nev

[T510]

20 hours ago, facthunter said:

The Chev V8 is used because its all alloy and Mainly for glider towing. It makes a lot of sense to use air-cooling for an aircraft Piston engine, Not so much in Cars these days. A Lot of TANKS used Aircooled RADIAL Motors..  Nev

Chev V8's are very common in marine use as well where they run at constant high load for hours on end, Mercruiser used Chev based motors for years

[danny_galaga]

16 minutes ago, skippydiesel said:

I think you misunderstand  me- I tried to be  careful with my use of language.

 

The often used, dismissal of auto engines, for use in aircraft, is that the auto engine is not designed for a constant power application. 

 

Aircraft do not operate at constant power, any more than auto engines ie the power is adjusted by the operator for diffrent stages. At a constant power, yes! for one part of the stage, Cruise.

 

Sure their power use cycle differs in its application & frequency  - with the exception of aircraft that spend most of their operating life in the circuit (more like a town car), the Cruise (low constant power) tends to be longer relative to the TO/Climb (high) & Descent (low) power bit like a car towing a caravan on a freeway.

 

As I pointed out - Ground based vehicles are generally supported against the effect of gravity on wheels. This means they do not need to expend energy to stay aloft, as an aircraft must, instead most of the engines energy is devoted to delivering  horizontal movement. So in Cruise (not towing anything) the engine can "loaf" delivering just enough power to mainatine speed. An aircraft in Cruise, will usually have the power reduced in Cruise (just like a car) but must still deliver sufficient energy, to forward motion/speed, to stay aloft, in addition to its assigned Cruise speed.

 

Ground vehicles are subject to constant changes in slope. Aircraft tend not to be (unless doing aerobatics), So ground based vehicles will have frequent changes in power to mainatine a contestant speed - this is likly to be detrimental to a long service life as heat generated, likly to fluctuate (cooling/expanding) along with power demand. Liquid cooling will assist in reducing this effect but can not be 100% effective.

 

Ground based engines, that spend relatively long periods in work, (trucks, taxi's, etc) often have remarkably long service lives due to near constant operating temperature. This suggests the other argument (short operating life), against auto engines in aircraft, is also based on urban myth.

 

I think you will agree, that there are  significant number of auto - aircraft engine conversions, that undermine the traditional argument against such  application.

That the auto engine is usually "tweaked" (Onetrack) does not change the fact that the engine is at its core the same engine. 

 

Tweaking is no diffrent from say shortening the oil change/service regime or removing unnecessary (to aircraft) accessories/fitting, adding a gear reduction, changing the ignition timing, to better reflect the duty. 

 

One one more speculation; For a truly successful auto conversion, a gearbox  will be required so that engine & prop can operate at their optimum rpm. this is where the power to weight argument against auto engines comes in - this can also be dismissed -  example Rotax.

 

Personally I would prefer to fly behind an engine designed for my aircraft. Trying to "tweak" an automotive engine to have similar performance/reliability, may be doable but why bother? The "tweaking" likly to raise the cost (time & $$) to something not to dissimilar to a dedicated aero engine. Once done there may be savings in parts, fuel economy performance smooth, quiet operation, feeling of achievement, etc ???

 

😈

 

 

I wanna rob a bank with you. Since you thinks it's the same, I'll take 80% and you can have 20% 😀

 

😇 

[facthunter]

 I personally think the chev Alloy V8 is a reasonable Motor  for Aircraft, and said so BEFORE it was used in glider towing. It's NOT their High Performance engine though. It's a 2 valve Pushrod Motor. The Mercury V8 Motor is a very specialised Product. The Chev. alloy Block wouldn't like sea water. Even Cast iron doesn't. Nev

[kgwilson]

4 pages of debate on aero or land internal combustion engines is interesting except they are all crap compared to the reliability and simplicity of an electric motor. One major moving part that doesn't touch anything other than the bearings at each end. EVs have proven their superiority once on board energy storage became a viable option. The latest can be charged in 5 minutes to provide over 500km of range. Aviation batteries now exist providing over 450 Wh/Kg where most EVs have batteries  between 160 & 200 Wh/Kg. They will be mainstream in a few years though not cheap.

[facthunter]

This "Constant power" thing is a misconstruction of the Issue. The first thing happening to an aero engine is FULL power from not fully warmed up for  a max of 5 minutes, The time limit is because the engine is being used as a HEAT SINK. THEN IT climbs at METO to cruise level where it then drops Back to say 75% POWER till Top of descent. It doesn't get any rest. On one flight I did  the time was 12  Hours. The four engines didn't miss a beat.  (that time). Nev

[Love to fly]

4 hours ago, BrendAn said:

There is a successful car engine in a certified aircraft.

The tecnam diesel uses a Mercedes diesel 

Umm a 70-horsepower Continental CD-170 engine is not a Mercedes diesel. There may have been some design input etc, but a Mercedes it isn't.  and Continental have a lot of experience building aviation engines.