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When will a diesel be available for my aircraft? |
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News, facts, and comments on the coming revolution for piston-engine aircraft.News of March 08, 2005Will the first 350HP diesel be a Thielert or a Continental?Philip Andrews wrote from Autralia: Thank you for your very informative website. I often have a look to see how things are progressing. Do you think you could possibly find out what Continental (TCM) are doing about their 350hp diesel? We need to convert to diesel in the near future and the only option at the moment is the Thielert Centurion 4. We don't like the idea of a high revving engine, nor a reduction gear box, nor liquid cooling, just more things to go wrong Do you know of any expert analysis that has been done on the Centurion 4? We like the idea of TCM's engine, their smaller GAP engine looked promising. Do you know if they are in partnership with Honda with their 350 hp engine? Thank you for your time and assistance and thanks again for your great website. Regards, Philip Andrews, MAF Australia . DieselAir answers: Our estimate is that Thielert is more advanced than TCM in developing a 350HP diesel. Here is why: Thielert has a 4 cyl. now running, operating, and certified. Aircrafts are manufactured and delivered with that engine right now (Diamond). Aircraft conversions (Cessna 172), the same. This diesel is a development of the Mercedes 4 cyl. 2.2 liter engine, which represents a lot of experience. Making a V-8 out of a 4 cylinder is relatively easy. TCM has nothing to show yet. The 350HP is being developed with Honda Motors which is a good reference, however the Japanese have much less experience in diesels than the Europeans. I am sure they can do it, but I also know that developing a brand new generation of piston engines takes a lot of time. You know the saying that with nine women you cannot produce a baby in one month: It is the same for internal combustion engines. SMA is also more advanced than TCM: they chose a different approach, consisting in revving up and gearing down the existing SMA O-305. Of the two I expect Thielert to be the first and SMA the second. Then comes the possible surprise: I am convinced that ultimately it will be a two stroke diesel that will really open the market. Here there are several prototypes already flying, and my bet is DeltaHawk will be the first to produce a V-8 two stroke in that range of power. Now about geared or non-geared engines: Gears have a bad reputation in the US because Continental and Lycomings are manufactured in small batches and so are their gear transmissions when they do have one, which never was very often. To obtain high precision, silent, long lasting gears at a low cost and zero-defect quality, you need mass production. So the engine may not come directly from the automobile industry, but future gear transmissions certainly will. Notice that the SMA engine, with Renault, Thielert, with Mercedes, and the future TCM diesel, with Honda, all come from an automobile environment. Who knows: we might even see timing belt transmissions instead of gears... But in any case, we do not expect to see a fully certified 350HP diesel flying on aircraft with N registers before 2008 or 9. For the kind of mission MAF Australia does, my bet is that your first diesel could be a Piper Aztec with two SMA's. posted at 12:50 AM |
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