'99 Intrepid - Dealer Stripped Oil Pan Drain threads?

Well said. I posted a while back about having my drain plug (repeatedly) rounded off by various oil change shops. Funny, it's lasted 18 months and looks like new ever since I decided to change my own oil. What worries me far more is what else has been, or might have been, neglected or damaged during this most simple of maintenance tasks. I also wonder how much damage might have been done by the screwdriver a minute lube shop left in the engine compartment in my wife's Jeep, had I not found it the next day.

Where do the metal shavings from the newly self-tapped threads go?

Matt

The new plug is magnetic and holds on to them.

What if the pan threads are aluminum?

Matt

The Porsche PFM was technically very successful. It failed because of Porsche's refusal to accomodate the trends and their pricing, which was higher than a Lycoming or Continental because they thought their product was more turbine-like.

Most of LyCon's market is now either Experimental or STC retrofit to certified aircraft-i.e.,O-320's in 150s to replace 0-200s or 0-235's,

0-360's to replace O-300 or GO-300 Skyhawks, etc. Porsche refused to sell to homebuilders and would only allow STC conversions if they did the work themselves to ridiculous standards.

Porsche also chose to carry full product liability insurance, having decided that their US auto distribution operations could be vulnerable to judgment. Product liability insurance has taken another upswing with the low interest rates prevalent today.

When the certificated PFM engine's parts went out of line production as the new Porsches transitioned engines, and it became apparent the OEM market would never pay a premium over LyCon gross overpricing in the first place, Porsche chose to pull the plug in grand fashion. They paid Mooney a bundle to offer the PFM owners a choice-trade their aircraft for a brand new one or get a new Continental FWF on theirs.

I think they actually got the FAA to rescind the type certificate, meaning the aircraft were no longer eligible for standard category operation if the owners had proven truculent.

Actually, I was under the impression that there was a steel insert in aluminum pans to hold the plug so the stripping rate should be the same between aluminum and steel pans but aluminum pans are a lot more expensive to replace.

The main complaint about the Lyconentals is that they are too expensive and have old technology. Everyone says look how cheap modern high-tech car engines are. The implication is that it is a piece of cake to make a high-tech AND inexpensive airplane engine using similar technology. Porsche found that this isn't the case and it is well rumored that Honda and maybe Toyota have also investigated this market and chose to pass. The reality is that airplane engines run at much higher continuous power outputs than almost any other engine, except maybe some marine applications. It simply isn't easy to design a lightweight and cheap engine that can last in this application.

That was my point. Porsche couldn't do anything that Lycoming or Continental wasn't already doing. That is my definition of success and Porsche wasn't successful.

Matt

Marine and light aircraft duty cycles are very similar and given a proper redrive an engine that does OK in continuous duty marine service will do OK in a light aircraft. Getting the power to weight down can be a challenge but there are enough experimental operators flying Subarus, V6 Fords, and other engines to prove the concept is essentially sound. Any of the US car makers' V8 engine lines will, in properly built configuration, put out 300 hp for ten minutes and 250 hp continuously, and at a all-up weight with radiators, coolant, and redrive around 650 lbs. that's heavier than the equivalent Lyc or Continental-but not radically so. It is the same weight as a R-985 Pratt which will run at

450 hp forever. But factor in total weight of fuel and the aerodynamic drag penalties of each and you will see that for a long enough range the total weight is less for the automotive V-8 which can operate at a BSFC , at these cruise power settings, air-cooled engines can't.

The Orenda V-8 and the Thielert TAE 125 are, when one cuts through the sales verbiage, auto conversions as well. They seem to be doing OK.

Really? How many Orenda V-8's have been sold? How many Thilerts?

Matt

Well, you could ask them, but it has to be more than PFM's... I saw the refitted King Air demonstrator do a max perf TO out of Jabara in Wichita on a really cold day . I don't think he rolled more than a thousand feet and climbed out like a lightly loaded 23/24 Lear (remember those?)

Read the section marked with an asterisk (it is near the bottom:

I was thinking this was the case, but wanted some backup before posting such here. It will be curious to see if Thielert has long-term commercial success. They may in Europe, but I doubt we'll see widespread adoption state-side. The reality is that all engines evolve over time to well suit their application. Car engines are really good for cars, but not for bull dozers or airplanes. Likewise, airplane engines are good for airplanes, but not for cars or dozers. Likewise, the dozer engines.

Matt

The Euro's have more money and the fuel delta is far higher over there. In fact there is no more avgas in much of Europe. If you have a A-65 Continental or any 80/87 engine you burn auto gas. A TIGO-541 Lyc? So Solly!

The reality is that all engines evolve

This was more true decades ago. All gasoline marine inboards are auto engines and the outboards are headed that way as well. Modern construction and ag equipment is all diesel and they are using the same engines as trucks, gensets, and marine-the days of purpose built engines like the early Cat dozer engines with two stages of purpose-built gas starting engines and the German Lanz Bulldog are over. The fact is, car engines have developed a great deal for auto, and marine, stationary, genset and pumping purposes whereas LyCon have atrophied.

If you did develop a clean sheet of paper recip for aircraft use, today, it would be a V-type,liquid cooled, en bloc construction engine, it would probably be a diesel (you can always turn a four stroke diesel into a gas engine but not the other way around) and it would also be excellent for marine and other uses. And you'd sell it for those as well. If you were smart you would build it in some country not on the best terms with the U.S. and certify and import it through a small company with no assets to speak of, incorporate it so that no court anywhere could deem it a personal holding corporation-which is what idiots like Richard Collins mean when the whine how evil lawyers can "pierce the corporate veil"-and put in the charter that the company _cannot purchase_ product liability insurance. And you would sell core engines and all parts on the same basis whether they were going in certificated aircraft or not-thus spreading certification costs across a wide base. (Not certifying and selling only to experimental operators would be a poor option IMO, because 1) when times get tough car conversions will become MUCH more appealing, and 2) I expect the FAA to be forced to put the kibosh on cookie-cutter production "homebuilts" like RV's in the near future.)

I'm not familiar intimately with marine engines so I'm not sure what they are doing today. They have used auto engines for years, but they used to use the truck versions that had different cams, more cooling system capacity, etc. They weren't stock engines from an automobile. Maybe that has changed, but I doubt it. It is overkill to design an auto engine that will run all day long at 75% power output as that just isn't required in an automobile. It just wouldn't make economic sense.

Ag, genset and marine are very similar in their requirements so using the same engines for these applications isn't a big deal. However, they are all quite different from aircraft applications where weight is a big deal.

Isn't this what Orenda tried? They didn't fare too well... How do you turn a four stroke diesel into a gas engine? Gas won't work well at

18:1 and higher compression ratios and you need a spark to ignite it. Neither are easy modifications to a diesel.

Matt

Actually some of the smaller automotive engines seem to be, especially European ones. The VW 4-cyl. comes to mind.

Sure they are. Different cylinder heads take care of both easily.

nate

It is overkill to design an

Small block, big block Chevy. You had 2 and 4 bolt blocks and forged and cast cranks. Same dimensions. Mercury Marine proved you could get

2000 hours at 250 hp out of a 327 Chevy in the 60s. When gas was cheap a lot of saltwater fishing boats ran them commercially and they would run them at 75% power all day every day.

VW and Peugeot had gas and diesel engines that shared blocks, cranks and rods, and in the case of VW the entire lower end. You could convert one over without pulling the engine if so inclined. It was also possible to convert the 5.7 Olds diesel to gas in-frame if you found a set of '60s heads that would give 10:1 compression with diesel pistons-but you had to pull the rad and AC condenser to swap camshafts. Pulling the engine and changing pistons worked better.

There are spark ignition natural gas and propane versions of most Cummins diesels. There is also a methanol burning 6V92 two cycle Detroit Diesel.

That is a good point. Smaller engines will be running at a higher percentage power output than larger engines generally. I was thinking more of the US, where I live, as we relatively few vehicles that need even 20% of their rated power most of the time.

Making the combustion chamber that much larger to lower the compression ratio to gasoline land will likely result in pretty poor combustion performance. And after this modification, you have a very heavy for its power gasoline engine. And you need a fair bit more than just a cylinder head. You need the rest of the ignition system, a different fuel delivery system, etc. All in all, not a trivial modification. Possible, yes, practical, probably not.

Matt

The weight penalty isn't very high or VW and Peugeot wouldn't have done it. Their blocks, cranks, and rods-in VW's case the whole assembled shortblock assembly-were the same. Isuzu, Mercedes Benz and Nissan had different blocks but made with the same patterns and tooling. Many people built good hot rod gas 350 Olds engines out of diesel blocks and cranks.

Diesels are heavy usually because there is no penalty for weight in their application, not because they have to be.

Automotive fuel injection and ignition systems are inexpensive (at OEM levels) commodity items, so almost all the work in building the spark ignition natural gas and propane Cummins and Series 50/60 Detroits was in designing a SI head and pistons. It's pretty trivial to hang a distributor somewhere off the cam or accessory drive.

Eh... a Diesel engine *does* need to be stronger than a similarly sized and powered gasoline engine, as olds proved. their engine was plenty strong for a gas motor but when used as a Diesel had all sorts of issues.

That said, intelligent design can go a long way towards offsetting the "extra" weight. A VW engine isn't particularly beefy, although I don't think I would want to use one in an airplane...

nate

The Olds diesel was based on a gas engine to begin with. That is the reason it was a piece of crap. Purpose-built diesel engines are much heavier than purpose-built gas engines need to be. Sure, you can use a diesel block and rotating components to make a gas engine, but it is now a much heavier than necessary gas engine.

Why would a manufacturer of an engine for any application put in more metal than was necessary? Even if weight isn't an issue, cost is always an issue and more metal costs more in general (highly machined parts being an obvious exception). Most diesels have compression ratios and thus cylinder pressures double or more that of gas engines. It takes more metal in the cylinders, pistons, rods and crank to withstand these pressures and still live a long life.

Matt