AVBLEND

[GeeBee]

If we did not have to run leaded fuel in our engines, we could ditch all these additives (and the arguments thereof) and run full synthetic oil. It constantly amazes me I can run a couple supercharged Yamaha 4 bangers with super charging, let them sit all winter on the lake and only change the synthetic oil every other year with no corrosion problems. I actually was curious once and did an oil analysis on one and came back normal.  IMHO when it comes to aviation engines, we are somewhere between stone adze and a tomahawk but we are paying AR-15 prices. There is no reason for all these cam, valve and cylinder problems in this day and age.

 

[Hank]

1 hour ago, GeeBee said:

There is no reason for all these cam, valve and cylinder problems in this day and age.

Sure there is--the time and money needed to pass required FAA testing and certification!

[Tim Jodice]

4 hours ago, GeeBee said:

There is no reason for all these cam, valve and cylinder problems in this day and age.

 

Lack of use is the reason. From Cape Air running turbocharged 520 Continentals to trainers running (I)O-3XX Lycomings that fly everyday rarely have theses issues. Continentals have there cylinder issues but a regularly flown engine reduce them.

Before I bought a airplane I rented a Piper Arrow. One day they had all the log book at the front office so out of curiosity i went through them. The engine had 2800 hours on it and it had no repairs any deeper than mag work done. it accumulated those hours in 7 years.  There are always the exceptions but I think everyone agrees that if you fly frequently they will give you good to great service. If it is 20 years old with 600 hours on it it probably will rot from the inside out.

All that said a friend of mine who has a 1977 Grumman tiger has used Avblend with Philips X/C 20w-50 since the day he bought it 1992. He used it because the previous owner used it. It still has the original engine in it with about 1800 hours on it. It has had one cylinder repaired because there is a cylinder on tigers that don't get the best cooling. For a engine to keep corrosion out for that long takes something other then regular multi weight oil and Avblend is the only thing he does differently. 

[GeeBee]

You missed my point.  These Yamaha marine engines sit for up to 6 months at a time, on a lake, in the winter, NOT RUNNING.   You want to talk about lack of use? Corrosive environment? They are aluminum blocks to boot. They don't have corrosion issues. They rev 6000 rpm, 4 cycle. They don't have head issues. The reason? Partly the fact you can run synthetic oil, partly the fact that they are manufactured in state of the art facilities. How is you can pick these engine up straight from the factory and run them, and do nothing to them, not even break in, for 100 hours. When you look at how a Rotax kicks butt on a Lycoming O-235 or a Continental O-200 from almost every conceivable point of view, you realize we are buying crap. Sorry the "lack of use" is an excuse for weak and antiquated manufacturing. There is no reason for these parts to be so weak on surface treatment in comparison to other engines.  

[PTK]

1 hour ago, airtim said:

For a engine to keep corrosion out for that long takes something other then regular multi weight oil and Avblend is the only thing he does differently. 

[N201MKTurbo]

1 hour ago, GeeBee said:

You missed my point.  These Yamaha marine engines sit for up to 6 months at a time, on a lake, in the winter, NOT RUNNING.   You want to talk about lack of use? Corrosive environment? They are aluminum blocks to boot. They don't have corrosion issues. They rev 6000 rpm, 4 cycle. They don't have head issues. The reason? Partly the fact you can run synthetic oil, partly the fact that they are manufactured in state of the art facilities. How is you can pick these engine up straight from the factory and run them, and do nothing to them, not even break in, for 100 hours. When you look at how a Rotax kicks butt on a Lycoming O-235 or a Continental O-200 from almost every conceivable point of view, you realize we are buying crap. Sorry the "lack of use" is an excuse for weak and antiquated manufacturing. There is no reason for these parts to be so weak on surface treatment in comparison to other engines.  

So, marine engines are more akin to aircraft engines than automobile engines, in that they both run at continuous high power settings. There is one big difference and that is the marine engine has an unlimited source of cooling water, so it operates over a very narrow temperature range. I doubt that any part of that marine engine ever gets above 180 degrees. We could make our aircraft engines nice and tight too if we could cool them like that, but we can't.  I've found that most marine engine's fuel specifics are worse than aircraft engines. I believe the power to weight ratios are not very good either.

[GeeBee]

A the power head of a Yamaha 200 hp outboard is 20 pounds heavier than an IO-360. With water jacket no less. Fuel Consumption? 19.8 gah WOT, sound familiar?

Look this is not to say you can hang a Yamaha on an airplane. It is about the quality of the manufacture and materials that are going into our engines. It is a second rate show for a first class price. There is no reason for cams and cylinders to corrode as fast as they do. Do a Rockwell on a Lycoming cam, then do one on an auto cam. Why can others hone a cylinder bore that requires no break in, but our does, and carefully so. How is it we still have two magnetos, at best one electronic when a Rotax. has two CDI systems with PMA, FAA certified. Could we not have PMA powered systems on our ignition? Stop making excuses for the poor engines we are fed.  If we don't demand better, we won't get better.

 

 

 

[Tim Jodice]

2 hours ago, PTK said:

It is the jar of course! 

[N201MKTurbo]

1 hour ago, GeeBee said:

A the power head of a Yamaha 200 hp outboard is 20 pounds heavier than an IO-360. With water jacket no less. Fuel Consumption? 19.8 gah WOT, sound familiar?

Look this is not to say you can hang a Yamaha on an airplane. It is about the quality of the manufacture and materials that are going into our engines. It is a second rate show for a first class price. There is no reason for cams and cylinders to corrode as fast as they do. Do a Rockwell on a Lycoming cam, then do one on an auto cam. Why can others hone a cylinder bore that requires no break in, but our does, and carefully so. How is it we still have two magnetos, at best one electronic when a Rotax. has two CDI systems with PMA, FAA certified. Could we not have PMA powered systems on our ignition? Stop making excuses for the poor engines we are fed.  If we don't demand better, we won't get better.

 

 

 

It sounds like you are in a good position to design and certify a new modern aircraft engine and put Lycoming and Continental out of business. Let me know when I can order one! 

[GeeBee]

You don't need to design and certify a new engine. You need to fix the paradigm for the ones we have. For starters, get rid of leaded fuel. If you have Wright J-5 Whirlwind, sorry, you're SOL. You'll have to mix in a lead additive, the rest of us are moving on with unleaded fuel. So stop trying to create an unleaded avgas that works for every engine ever certified.  That enables a big change, maybe the biggest change in aviation ever. Lubrication. We can go to synthetics, which means turbos last to TBO (no more shaft coking, ask the diesel boys how big a change that was) and valves stop being sick in the morning. On top of that improved corrosion protection the likes of which we have never seen. Finally we will see much lower engine temps. Heat damages engines. That will be the cheapest way to clean up a poor manufacturing process. Then you can leave the Avblend and Camguard on the shelf.

Second, fix the ignition. That will require some dollars, but is doable. We are 50% there, we need to press the FAA to finish the job by recognizing PMA power as reasonable alternative for magnetos. PMAs have been used millions of hours on FADEC jets (how do you think you power the FADEC independent of A/C power?).

 

 

[jetdriven]

6 hours ago, airtim said:

Lack of use is the reason. From Cape Air running turbocharged 520 Continentals to trainers running (I)O-3XX Lycomings that fly everyday rarely have theses issues. Continentals have there cylinder issues but a regularly flown engine reduce them.

Before I bought a airplane I rented a Piper Arrow. One day they had all the log book at the front office so out of curiosity i went through them. The engine had 2800 hours on it and it had no repairs any deeper than mag work done. it accumulated those hours in 7 years.  There are always the exceptions but I think everyone agrees that if you fly frequently they will give you good to great service. If it is 20 years old with 600 hours on it it probably will rot from the inside out.

All that said a friend of mine who has a 1977 Grumman tiger has used Avblend with Philips X/C 20w-50 since the day he bought it 1992. He used it because the previous owner used it. It still has the original engine in it with about 1800 hours on it. It has had one cylinder repaired because there is a cylinder on tigers that don't get the best cooling. For a engine to keep corrosion out for that long takes something other then regular multi weight oil and Avblend is the only thing he does differently. 

When were these two engines built?

[tmo]

To be fair, Continental does have a liquid cooled version of the IO550 engine used for example on the Extra 400.  It is a challenge to set up right, as documented for example on EuroGA.

They also have diesel engines (liquid cooled, fadec, geared, modern engine oils approved).  And there is a nice 4 person plane with it - the Tecnam P2010

From direct experience I can confirm that the Rotax engines are indeed bulletproof, and they handle months of non-use well. They did not catch on in the US, but over here they are the go-to engine for anything that can run on 100hp or so.  And no, there is no problem with auto gas in the tanks after the 6 months.  To add insult to injury, they are geared.

Another family of engines that I believe use modern motor oils are the Austro aviation diesel engines.  180hp for less than 10gph of JetA1, 410 lbs, turbocharged, FADEC, liquid cooled, and geared.

[Tim Jodice]

9 hours ago, jetdriven said:

When were these two engines built?

The Tiger, it was a new engine in 1977

The Arrow, it was a factory overhaul in 2005. I last flew it in 2012. I doubt it is still on the airplane it would have like 6000 hours on it.

[GeeBee]

The "lack of use" is a red herring. Not saying it does not exist but it is the manufacturer saying, "We can't build an engine on how it is normally used." Not long ago Mercury Marine did the same thing. After a rash of problems with corrosion on their outdrives they said, "Our outdrives are not meant to be used continuously in water". Huh? Lycoming and Continental both know that the vast majority of their engines are not flown. daily, sometimes not weekly. It would stand to reason someone would say, "Let's design to that requirement". As tmo points out, Rotax apparently knows how. Rotax will eventually start into the 150-200 hp market. When that happens, look out.

Second, I don't think most here understand the value of synthetic lubrication. With it, and unleaded fuel, large parts of ignition problems go away because plugs don't foul.  That is why automobiles go 100K for spark plugs.Turbos last forever. I have two turbo Diesel engines running synthetic oil, I don't even idle them down and both turbos have over 150K on them.I have another gasser with twin turbos. The turbos are warrantees 100K as long as I use Mobil 1. Some trucking company running synthetic oil only add additive packages, no oil change to synthetic oil. If you were to add "coil on plug" electronic ignition you could throw away pressurized mags and all the arcing and wear of distributors and high tension leads. All these things could be done with existing engines and the entire world of reciprocating engines would change overnight. 

Certification? If Lycoming and Continental were to develop STCs for electronic ignition would that not be a new profit center? They have the engineering capability and the certification people to shepherd it through, why not create some business in an other wise moribund industry? Why are they letting others build and develop?

 

[tmo]

36 minutes ago, GeeBee said:

They have the engineering capability

Or do they? As you point out, nothing innovative has really come out of those R&D departments in a while. KInd of like Honeywell/King. Not that they need any real innovation, they just need to take a COTS (commercial off the shelf) product, sprinkle some pixie dust on it so it can be called "for aviation".  But they don't have to, the replacement cylinder / camshaft / crankshaft is a good market, especially if you time the mandatory SB after most of your warranty obligations have expired (think SB569).

If I was a conspiracy theory person, which I try not to be, I could go as far and suggest that the "engineering" is aimed towards introducing planned obsolescence by finding approved solutions that aren't as time-proof as the old ones turned out to be.

[GeeBee]

You and I are on the same wave length my friend.

 

[N201MKTurbo]

I have been involved in GA sense the early 80s. Look at all the companies that came out with new modern replacement cylinders meant to replace our old fashioned cylinders. They all were supposed last forever without issue. It seems most were taken out of the fleet by AD... 

[EricJ]

14 hours ago, GeeBee said:

Second, fix the ignition. That will require some dollars, but is doable. We are 50% there, we need to press the FAA to finish the job by recognizing PMA power as reasonable alternative for magnetos. PMAs have been used millions of hours on FADEC jets (how do you think you power the FADEC independent of A/C power?).

Lycoming makes one.   Tecnam puts them in the Travellers that Cape Air uses.

https://www.lycoming.com/engines/ie2

[N201MKTurbo]

The problem with these engines with electronic ignition and fuel injection is that they bring practically zero benefit with regard to cruise speeds or fuel flow. Their biggest benefit is in starting and partial power performance. Who cares about that? That doesn't pay the bills. When it comes to overhaul time and you can opt for one of these engines you have to run the numbers, and it rarely makes economic sense. 

While it would be easy to de-rate our current engines to run on unleaded fuel, no one wants to give up the power. So here we are after 40 years, still looking for a 100 octane replacement fuel. 

[Tim Jodice]

11 minutes ago, EricJ said:

Lycoming makes one.   Tecnam puts them in the Travellers that Cape Air uses.

https://www.lycoming.com/engines/ie2

Imagine that on a Mooney! Would you call it a Bravo being a Lycoming? Bravo X 375? what do you think a mooney would do with 375HP?

[Hank]

1 hour ago, airtim said:

Imagine that on a Mooney! Would you call it a Bravo being a Lycoming? Bravo X 375? what do you think a mooney would do with 375HP?

Blow right past Vne in level cruise!! Never mind the descent . . . .

[N201MKTurbo]

Just now, Hank said:

Blow right past Vne in level cruise!! Never mind the descent . . . .

But it would climb like a Comanche 400!

[jetdriven]

5 hours ago, airtim said:

The Tiger, it was a new engine in 1977

The Arrow, it was a factory overhaul in 2005. I last flew it in 2012. I doubt it is still on the airplane it would have like 6000 hours on it.

the tiger engine is not very succeptible to lifter spalling and failure.  The Arrow is very likely a roller cam motor. Lycoming began those in 2005.

[GeeBee]

All Lycomings have a weak cam. Ask any overhaul shop. Roller lifters reduce the abuse, but the cam is still weak and easily succumbs to the slightest corrosion.

 

 

 

[jetdriven]

Ive asked a few overhaul shops. None have had any issues with roller cams or lifters.  They've been in the field for 15 years now. Do you have a source for this claim?