Last edited by Av8r3400; 04-10-2024 at 07:27 PM. Reason: fixed the quote coding
Harlan and Susan Payne
Flying FarmFox STI Kitfox N61HP
Rotax 915is, Airmaster prop.
https://www.youtube.com/@KitfoxPilot/videos
This may solve your problem....
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I was at Sun N Fun on Wednesday and came across the "Clone". It at a vendor at Paradise City, the ultralight area. He revealed that the manufacturer had beeb producing "official" Rotax parts for years. I didn't get the spelling but the engines had "ZD" on the valve covers and he said the company was Zeuzus ... or something like that. Below are a few pictures. It looks much like a 912ULS, 100 hp, the castings did look a little rough, in that the surfaces weren't smooth. The carburetors also looked like knock-offs.
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Ralph
Kitfox 3 flying
Building Kitfox SS7 (RockFox)
915iS Engine
Building Partner Victor V
MMatt is a You tuber who has installed one of these a while back on his Zenith. He Paid a 3rd of the price of the Rotax when he bought it so I'm assuming around $8,000 but when I looked them up they go around $16,000 now. I feel for only $6,000ish less than a Rotax 912ULS it doesn't really seem like it's worth it at least not for me. I feel that the price of Rotax engines does seem inflated when compared to the prices of engines in other machines with equal or better engineering and technology not just airplanes. Personally I'd want the Rotax for piece of mind and resale. I attached a couple videos one where he talks about the engine on his own and the next his interview with the Experimental Aircraft Channel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnCEgmwTv5U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrZAQlKEJ8s
Last edited by ADK-Flyer; 04-12-2024 at 06:04 AM.
This will be interesting to see how this plays out. I?d be reluctant to fly behind a ?new? engine manufacturer?s first generation model, but there are others (less risk averse than me) who will. Hopefully this gentlemen will publish updates on how the engine performs over time. If it has comparable reliability to Rotax, that might spur Rotax to readjust their pricing. If it doesn?t it will soon disappear just as other experimental aviation manufactures have. Only time will tell!
Michael Meyers
KF IV
Las Vegas, NV
Thought this was interesting the KFA company out of South Africa is using these engines in their planes and selling the engines as well. They had a few videos posted about them. The first video is an unboxing the second video is installing their turbo kit and the 3rd is the breakdown of all the different models of these engines which is a lot more than I realized. https://youtu.be/RewH2-n0sSI?si=rcTvuA4zRJEJMvOl https://youtu.be/3q6-FmxVkwo?si=wzp3Xqsy-SotaHh9 https://youtu.be/zA9hOLtpy3o?si=O-9Zpf-48JeCtcEc
I hope these gentlemen in S. Africa put the engines through the paces to see how they hold up. I?d like to see a few of them put in flight school aircraft and see how they handle the abuse. It was interesting to see they chose to do upgrades to the stock models. I like that they are sharing their experience with the public via YouTube. Like I said before only time and many hours will tell whether these engines prove to be the ?Rotax Killer.?
Michael Meyers
KF IV
Las Vegas, NV