Highest time TSIO 360 LB

[Crawfish]

Curious what the longest someone has taken their TSIO 360 too. 
 

Currently mine has 1835 hours, with no plans of overhaul until the engine tells us we need it. Part of that comes with lots of oil analysis, borescopes, full engine monitor to monitor temperatures, properly preheating the engine etc. 

 

I’m wondering why others got to when venturing beyond TBO and what eventually brought them to overhaul?

 

Thanks all! 
 Austin

[Ragsf15e]

2 hours ago, Crawfish said:

Curious what the longest someone has taken their TSIO 360 too. 
 

Currently mine has 1835 hours, with no plans of overhaul until the engine tells us we need it. Part of that comes with lots of oil analysis, borescopes, full engine monitor to monitor temperatures, properly preheating the engine etc. 

 

I’m wondering why others got to when venturing beyond TBO and what eventually brought them to overhaul?

 

Thanks all! 
 Austin

I can’t wait to hear the answers, but my MB/SB has been OH 3 times in its ~1700 hour history!  Thankfully, I didn’t pay for them (except in my purchase price).  There’s nothing really telling in the logs as to what might have caused the first two OH, but the last one followed a prop strike on a traffic cone at an FBO.

[LANCECASPER]

3 hours ago, Crawfish said:

Curious what the longest someone has taken their TSIO 360 too. 
 

Currently mine has 1835 hours, with no plans of overhaul until the engine tells us we need it. Part of that comes with lots of oil analysis, borescopes, full engine monitor to monitor temperatures, properly preheating the engine etc. 

 

I’m wondering why others got to when venturing beyond TBO and what eventually brought them to overhaul?

 

Thanks all! 
 Austin

Has it had cylinders replaced or overhauled in that time period? Continentals have a reputation of needing cylinders and half TBO.

[Crawfish]

In the time I’ve owned it 400ish hours. We’ve replaced one cylinder (the #4) before I owned it logs show #3 and #5 have been replaced. 
 

I don’t mind replacing cylinders, in my mind they’re a replaceable part on our engines. 

[gabez]

1 hour ago, LANCECASPER said:

Has it had cylinders replaced or overhauled in that time period? Continentals have a reputation of needing cylinders and half TBO.

I bought mine with a 2016 engine about 800 hrs and I did a top end right away. all cylinders into the high 50s. 

[Ragsf15e]

1 hour ago, Crawfish said:

In the time I’ve owned it 400ish hours. We’ve replaced one cylinder (the #4) before I owned it logs show #3 and #5 have been replaced. 
 

I don’t mind replacing cylinders, in my mind they’re a replaceable part on our engines. 

Have you done the turbo?

[philiplane]

I maintained a Turbo Arrow, and took the engine to 2600 hours without a cylinder replacement. I put new rotocoils on the exhaust valves every 800 hours. By 2600 hours, the decision was made to overhaul because the oil consumption was a quart every 3-4 hours, and the compressions were in the 50's. We used Camguard on this engine, and did a ring flush at the same time as protocol replacement. 

The key to Continental longevity is replacing the rotocoils on a regular basis, so the valves will stay spinning.

[Crawfish]

27 minutes ago, Ragsf15e said:

Have you done the turbo?

Negative, just went through annual and had them inspect it they said it looked good. 

[Crawfish]

22 minutes ago, philiplane said:

I maintained a Turbo Arrow, and took the engine to 2600 hours without a cylinder replacement. I put new rotocoils on the exhaust valves every 800 hours. By 2600 hours, the decision was made to overhaul because the oil consumption was a quart every 3-4 hours, and the compressions were in the 50's. We used Camguard on this engine, and did a ring flush at the same time as protocol replacement. 

The key to Continental longevity is replacing the rotocoils on a regular basis, so the valves will stay spinning.

Thank you very much. We’re on effectively the same program plus borescopes at oil changes. 

[LANCECASPER]

Early TSIO-360 engines had their problems, but it seems like the longevity improved over the years.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/kzbk4z7sit4hsobopsy5u/Early-Continental-TSIO-360-problems.pdf?rlkey=fegnjhavujq7uio0go76nad2m&dl=0

[Z W]

My TSIO-360-MB was installed new in 1988, 2828 hours ago. It got an "IRAN" in 2004, 1436 hours ago, which included all new cylinders, lifters, and main bearings. No idea why they didn't do whatever else was necessary to call it a major overhaul.

Since then, we have replaced 4 out of 6 cylinders again. We've overhauled the turbo, wastegate, turbo controller, fuel pump, prop governor, exhaust in the last 14 years. Have replaced all the fuel lines, almost all of the oil lines, a few seals and gaskets every year it seems. Replaced 20+ aged adel clamps under the cowling last annual. Now overhaul the starter and alternators pre-emptively every 500 hours. 

Currently changing the oil every 25 hours, checking the filter, watching oil analysis, and hoping that engine shops get less busy so that the downtime won't be too bad when the time comes. Burns a quart every 5-6 hours, compressions are good, no issues.

Considering trying to find an engine core to get rebuilt, or ordering a factory new to swap, then selling the current engine as a core, or even keeping it for spare parts, but the TSIO-360-MB is rare and never seems to be for sale on the salvage sites. Having the current engine overhauled with 9+ months of downtime is essentially taking a year off of flying. All options are expensive.

I do want to overhaul before it starts making metal and fills the case with debris to damage the internal parts. I'm thinking in the next 400 hours or so, which would be "TBO" from the engine's major IRAN. At my rate that's 4-5 years of flying.

The engine has been strong and reliable. The accessories, less so, but often those aren't replaced during major overhaul, or are only really expected to get 500 hours or so. You see planes for sale with "fresh overhauls" but 20+ year old hoses and rusty accessories. The devil is sometimes in the details. True of all aircraft engines as far as I can tell.

I now try to replace each component about the time it hits its expected end of life. This has greatly improved dispatch reliability.

[Z W]

A note on cylinder replacement - 

3 of the 4 cylinders we replaced, I think were maybe done prematurely or even unnecessarily. It was earlier in plane ownership and at annual the shop would just say, "Compressions are low, recommend a new cylinder." Not once did the shop talk about Continental's recommended procedure to go fly the plane and re-measure it. Either the shop didn't know, or was taking advantage of an owner who didn't know.

Wouldn't use that shop any more but the people involved are gone anyways.

The last cylinder we replaced did have compression in the 40's that wasn't fixed by lapping the valves. After lapping them it actually had high CHTs (about 410 in climb) and I just turned around, landed, and said replace it. That's the only one I'm pretty sure actually needed to be replaced, though I've since wondered if the CHTs and valve lapping were even related. Replacing them is a cost but not that big of a deal.

I have wondered how much of the reputation of these engines "needing new cylinders" is from this type of thing.

[Schllc]

29 minutes ago, Z W said:

I have wondered how much of the reputation of these engines "needing new cylinders" is from this type of thing.

I absolutely guarantee that most were replaced unnecessarily.  I sold a plane about four years ago. In the prebuy they said a cylinder needed to be replaced due to low compression. I acquiesced to get the deal done but was very skeptical. 
They buyer took the credit, but didn’t replace the cylinder, two new owners, four years and 360 hours later it is still flying on that “bad” cylinder. 

[CL605]

I've not had experience with the engine in question, but I have run a pair of it's big brothers (TSIO 520) to 1000 hours beyond TBO (2400+ hours on FRM with a 1400 TBO). I also bought a Super Viking with 2080 hours TT airframe and engine (IO 520D) that had some valve wobble, so I had all 6 cylinders topped. I later sold the plane and the new owner just passed 2800 TSOH. The engine was installed in 1973 (non-VAR crank) and has never been off the airframe. Admittedly this is anecdotal, but my conviction is that heat is the largest contributor to engine wear. I aim for 380 CHT as a max on Continentals, which is not easy in south Florida temps, but the engines all seem to "live long and prosper" when kept cool(er). YMMV

BTW, when topping the Viking engine we discovered a badly broken compression ring. The compression test was still normal. Go figure.

[Fly Boomer]

2 hours ago, CL605 said:

BTW, when topping the Viking engine we discovered a badly broken compression ring. The compression test was still normal. Go figure.

According to Mike Busch, compression test is useless.

[Ragsf15e]

5 hours ago, Z W said:

My TSIO-360-MB was installed new in 1988, 2828 hours ago. It got an "IRAN" in 2004, 1436 hours ago, which included all new cylinders, lifters, and main bearings. No idea why they didn't do whatever else was necessary to call it a major overhaul.

Since then, we have replaced 4 out of 6 cylinders again. We've overhauled the turbo, wastegate, turbo controller, fuel pump, prop governor, exhaust in the last 14 years. Have replaced all the fuel lines, almost all of the oil lines, a few seals and gaskets every year it seems. Replaced 20+ aged adel clamps under the cowling last annual. Now overhaul the starter and alternators pre-emptively every 500 hours. 

Currently changing the oil every 25 hours, checking the filter, watching oil analysis, and hoping that engine shops get less busy so that the downtime won't be too bad when the time comes. Burns a quart every 5-6 hours, compressions are good, no issues.

Considering trying to find an engine core to get rebuilt, or ordering a factory new to swap, then selling the current engine as a core, or even keeping it for spare parts, but the TSIO-360-MB is rare and never seems to be for sale on the salvage sites. Having the current engine overhauled with 9+ months of downtime is essentially taking a year off of flying. All options are expensive.

I do want to overhaul before it starts making metal and fills the case with debris to damage the internal parts. I'm thinking in the next 400 hours or so, which would be "TBO" from the engine's major IRAN. At my rate that's 4-5 years of flying.

The engine has been strong and reliable. The accessories, less so, but often those aren't replaced during major overhaul, or are only really expected to get 500 hours or so. You see planes for sale with "fresh overhauls" but 20+ year old hoses and rusty accessories. The devil is sometimes in the details. True of all aircraft engines as far as I can tell.

I now try to replace each component about the time it hits its expected end of life. This has greatly improved dispatch reliability.

Have you tried calling a shop like Western Skyways who does a lot of engines and see what parts are long lead time?  I actually thought the OH time for TCM TSIO-360 engines was coming back down towards a couple months except for maybe cylinders and those could be pre ordered.  Of course all bets are off if you need any major internals.  Another good option is to just order that factory reman sometime in the next 100-200 hours.  When it arrives, replace the engine.  Maybe you gave up the last couple hundred hours you could have squeezed out of the current engine, but you have very little downtime as the tradeoff.

[LANCECASPER]

1 hour ago, Ragsf15e said:

Another good option is to just order that factory reman sometime in the next 100-200 hours.  When it arrives, replace the engine.  Maybe you gave up the last couple hundred hours you could have gotten out of the current engine, but you have very little downtime as the tradeoff.

@Z W I believe in on-condition, but with the amount of time on the lower half of this engine, this is a good suggestion.

This is not a nearly-bullet-proof Lycoming O-320 or O-360 that regularly go to 3000 hours. There are a lot of the Continental TSIO-360 engines that don't come close to TBO. The way you've flown it has paid off, but the present engine doesn't owe you anything and as fast as engine prices are going up, you might actualyl save money in the long run, even if you don't squeeze the last 100-200 hours out of it. Getting stranded somewhere with an engine failure limits your options on overhaul and you probably won't get a core value at that point. Plus I doubt that putting it down in a field is a lot of fun either. 

It isn't an easy decision to make, since this is the point in ownership that, once you overhaul or buy an engine, you will for sure have more into it (purchase price, upgrades and engine - not maintenance) than you can sell it for. But that's not counting the "free" hours (1000 past TBO) you got from it already. Someday when the time comes to sell, you'll have to account for a 2800 hour engine one way or another. Peace of mind is worth a lot also. New engines do have infant mortality, but Continental and Lycoming have really improved quality control on new engines.  On way-past-TBO engines you're prone to hearing sounds that aren't there at times - wondering when it will fail. (I bought my first airplane, a C-172 at first run TBO and ran it 500 past but was always wondering where I was going to put it down if it failed. It was unfounded though since I heard many years later that it had 4000 hours on the bottom end and only one top overhaul during that time. But again yours is not a 4 cylinder Lycoming)

Talk to Continental at Sun N Fun or Oshkosh, sometimes there are some deals  or accommodations that aren't published . . .

[DonMuncy]

When I got my 231, the logbooks showed 4 cylinders had been replaced. Before I learned better, at an annual, the shop replaced a cylinder due to "low compression".  After that I studied up on Continental's recommendations on low compressions; ie. fly it an hour or so and check again. I never replaced another cylinder.

[Fly Boomer]

11 minutes ago, DonMuncy said:

When I got my 231, the logbooks showed 4 cylinders had been replaced. Before I learned better, at an annual, the shop replaced a cylinder due to "low compression".  After that I studied up on Continental's recommendations on low compressions; ie. fly it an hour or so and check again. I never replaced another cylinder.

MIke Busch has replaced cylinders (only when absolutely necessary) on the TSIO-520s in his 310, but one of his engines is now more than 5,000 SMOH.  Busch is a fan of using the borescope regularly, lapping the valves if necessary, and replacing rotocoils as necessary, but refuses to split the case based on hours.  Not the same engines, but the 360s and big-bore Continental's have a lot in common.

https://www.savvyaviation.com/the-great-beyond-tbo/

 

[MikeOH]

2 hours ago, LANCECASPER said:

Getting stranded somewhere with an engine failure limits your options on overhaul

Sure, but in the context here, of high-time engines I posit a heretical question:  Is there really any data that even shows correlation, let alone cause and effect, that over TBO engines fail catastrophically at a higher rate than low time engines?  IMHO, I'd be more nervous about a catastrophic failure on a new engine or fresh overhaul.

[Crawfish]

Prior to our ownership 2 cylinders were replaced due to low compression. Logs didn’t have specifics on why they had low compression. 
 

The one we replaced was low compression more specifically past the rings we tried using Mike Busch’s ring flush procedure but it didn’t help. The amount of blow by was outside the tolerances allowed by what the continental crank case pressure test said was acceptable. So we replaced the cylinder with an overhauled one. (We had purchased an extra cylinder when we bought the plane. Still coming down off covid parts delay at the time, there were several months lead time and we figured we would need one eventually and figured it was a cheap way to insure against long periods of downtime.) 

[Z W]

4 hours ago, Ragsf15e said:

Have you tried calling a shop like Western Skyways who does a lot of engines and see what parts are long lead time?  I actually thought the OH time for TCM TSIO-360 engines was coming back down towards a couple months except for maybe cylinders and those could be pre ordered.  Of course all bets are off if you need any major internals.  Another good option is to just order that factory reman sometime in the next 100-200 hours.  When it arrives, replace the engine.  Maybe you gave up the last couple hundred hours you could have squeezed out of the current engine, but you have very little downtime as the tradeoff.

That's good to hear about decreasing lead times, and either option is kind of what I'm thinking I will do. I don't want to run it until failure.

[Z W]

3 hours ago, LANCECASPER said:

@Z W I believe in on-condition, but with the amount of time on the lower half of this engine, this is a good suggestion.

This is not a nearly-bullet-proof Lycoming O-320 or O-360 that regularly go to 3000 hours. There are a lot of the Continental TSIO-360 engines that don't come close to TBO. The way you've flown it has paid off, but the present engine doesn't owe you anything and as fast as engine prices are going up, you might actualyl save money in the long run, even if you don't squeeze the last 100-200 hours out of it. Getting stranded somewhere with an engine failure limits your options on overhaul and you probably won't get a core value at that point. Plus I doubt that putting it down in a field is a lot of fun either. 

It isn't an easy decision to make, since this is the point in ownership that, once you overhaul or buy an engine, you will for sure have more into it (purchase price, upgrades and engine - not maintenance) than you can sell it for. But that's not counting the "free" hours (1000 past TBO) you got from it already. Someday when the time comes to sell, you'll have to account for a 2800 hour engine one way or another. Peace of mind is worth a lot also. New engines do have infant mortality, but Continental and Lycoming have really improved quality control on new engines.  On way-past-TBO engines you're prone to hearing sounds that aren't there at times - wondering when it will fail. (I bought my first airplane, a C-172 at first run TBO and ran it 500 past but was always wondering where I was going to put it down if it failed. It was unfounded though since I heard many years later that it had 4000 hours on the bottom end and only one top overhaul during that time. But again yours is not a 4 cylinder Lycoming)

Talk to Continental at Sun N Fun or Oshkosh, sometimes there are some deals  or accommodations that aren't published . . .

I agree with all of this, though to be honest, I'm going to be more nervous for the first 200 hours on an overhauled or new motor about noises or failures than the next 200 hours on this one that has faithfully run for so long. But at some point every engine will fail without service and rebuild, so you can't continue that thought exercise forever.

I don't have any current plans to sell the plane and it would be hard to convince myself to now that all the accessories and the airframe are in good shape and known. But yes an overhaul is another large commitment to keeping it around for a while and running at least another 500 hours or so.

[LANCECASPER]

1 hour ago, MikeOH said:

Sure, but in the context here, of high-time engines I posit a heretical question:  Is there really any data that even shows correlation, let alone cause and effect, that over TBO engines fail catastrophically at a higher rate than low time engines?  IMHO, I'd be more nervous about a catastrophic failure on a new engine or fresh overhaul.

I mentioned infant mortality in my post and for sure it could happen on any new or overhauled engine. On most engines I agree with you on over-TBO engines having proven reliability, but not the TSIO360, if you personally haven't flown all of those hours from new.

I've had a couple of them and if you fly them very conservatively (CHT 380 or lower) you stand a better than not chance of hitting TBO with a set of cylinders half way.  But early on Mooney and others marketed these as speed demons and put in the POH very high temperatures as being acceptable. The redline on the factory CHT was 460!!! On a hot day with the cowl flaps closed and not-so-good baffles you had a hard time keeping it in the low 400's. At least I did when I first bought my 231, until going to my first MAPA convention and sitting in on a the K model forum. High temps didn't turn out so well for most owners, as described in the post i made yesterday with the Dropbox link to the history of the TSIO-360 engine. On this engine, the more times the airplane has changed hands the greater the chances are that it has been flown incorrectly by a new owner. 

@Z W has flown this one correctly and that's why he has been able to run it to 2800. But  personally at 2800 hours TT I would feel more comfortable changing out the engine with a factory engine and feel that my chances would be better with the new engine.  Others may feel differently. We all make our own choices.

One of the reasons I traded my '83 231 for a Bravo in 1996 is that mine was getting very close to TBO and it was using more oil than I was comfortable with and once I ran the numbers on a new engine, even back then, plus all of the improvements on the M20M it helped me justify trading for a new airplane. (You need a lot of justification to do that, and I'm pretty good at convincing myself . . lol).  Ironically the next owner of the 231 converted it to a 262, just like @Z W's airplane, which, thirty years later now belongs to @geoffb on here.  My 1996 Bravo now belongs to @Patrick Horan on here. . .   the list goes on . . lol.

[Z W]

To stir the pot, my engine doesn't run smooth LOP, so these are all ROP hours. 

I do keep the CHTs under 380 at all times, easy to do with adjusting the cowl flaps. 120KIAS full power climbs to cruise altitude. Always have kept TIT under 1625, but lately I keep it a little lower, under 1600, at the price of .3-.5 GPH. Usually cruise 70-75% power. No idea if this contributed to the engine's successful run or if I've just been lucky. Your mileage may vary.