Slowly but surly.
Slowly but surly.
You have quite the project there. Looks pretty Kool! I hope you have plans for a muffler of some type at the end of that header, or she's gonna sing pretty loud!
Some awfully fancy suspension, too...
finally had some time to jump back in. as for Honda engines, no doubt they are very highly engineered... with the tolerancing so tight that some of them run 0W and 5W oil, with a robust injection system. many of these engines run 300k miles in cars with no problems if regularly maintained.
so.... what are the differences between a true aircraft piston engine and an auto engine? i found this little gem of an article from 2008 that you all might want to check out:
http://www.planeandpilotmag.com/arti.../#.Wm3gVJM-fUI
from a demand standpoint, aircraft engines are designed to be a much different animal for some very specific reasons. will the auto engines probably do the job just fine? absolutely. from a longevity standpoint, i am not so sure. i will let the aircraft engine engineers debate the pro's and con's.
i actually work for Honda manufacturing here in Ohio, and would love to have the confidence to be able to fly a Honda engine at 65 to 80% of its duty day in and day out, but would have to guess that the TBO equivalent of an auto engine would have to fall somewhere in the 500 to 1,000 range, maybe lower or higher. and, of the auto engines being flown, i would say that they (Honda) would be top of the heap, HOWEVER.... they are simply not aircraft engines. they are not designed to be ran balls out each and every time they are run.
what would be an interesting experiment would be for lycoming or continental (or rotax for that matter), actually take a 1.5L fit engine and determine what the TBO would be, or even with the modifications which viking does to their engines. i would guess that the results would surprise most of us.
i just don't know guys (and gals). it just seems to me that if safety is the top priority, in good conscience, i just can't bring myself to believe than an auto engine is the way to go.
Well said. My feelings exactly.
Jim Ott
Portland, OR
Kitfox SS7 flying
Rotax 912ULS
Last edited by Flyboy66; 01-29-2018 at 08:30 AM. Reason: Typo