New Engine Options for Jabiru –Rotax or Lycoming

[fly_tornado]

Talk about life being stranger than fiction, a bloke on the tornado maillist who never understood my suspicions of the Jabiru. He was flying his Tornado on Saturday and he had a prop come off his engine, a forced landing ensued and broke off his nose wheel as well as a prop strike on his tail fin. He recovered the plane yesterday and discovered the engine had frozen and has thrown a rod after 300 hours....

 

 

[eightyknots]

eggenfella uses his customer base to test his products. maybe wait until a few engines have made the 1000 hour mark

 

Well! at last! A constructive comment from FT. Things are looking up!

 

Talk about life being stranger than fiction, a bloke on the tornado maillist who never understood my suspicions of the Jabiru. He was flying his Tornado on Saturday and he had a prop come off his engine, a forced landing ensued and broke off his nose wheel as well as a prop strike on his tail fin. He recovered the plane yesterday and discovered the engine had frozen and has thrown a rod after 300 hours....

Was that an Eggenfella engine??

 

 

[coljones]

.......... In the 15 issues I checked, there were 19 engine related incidents reported on the Jabiru 2200 or 3300 engine; there were 4 on the Rotax 912's; 1 on the Hirth and 1 on a Mosler. (I ignored the Rotax 2 stroke engines although surprisingly there were very few of them listed anyway. I also ignored any Jabiru engine issue caused by external incidents like water in the fuel or residue in the carb’s due to a fuel tank problem).

To be fair, Jabiru has about 50% of the Australian market for recreational aircraft (I believe) so you would expect to see a much higher Jabiru representation generally in the Pilot Notes section. However, much of the rest of the fleet consists of a version of the Rotax 912, so in respect to 4 stroke aircraft engines, it’s probably close to, but not quite, a 50/50 split.

 

..........

The difficulty with a lot of these surveys through the journals is that no indication is given of the hours behind the failures.

 

Given my big drive of 70K each way to get to the strip a couple of times a week I would expect my Hyundi engine to give me more trouble than the Toyota engine in my mother's Corolla, used only to slip around the corner to church once a week.

 

The local Jabs do a lot more work, 7 days a week, than the local Foxbats and Lightwings.

 

Perhaps we should come up with a common metric measuring failure rates and cumulative hours accross the fleets so we can make like with like comparisons.

 

Col

 

 

[Guernsey]

Hours behind the failures are not always a good guide as it also depends on how long it took to accumulate those hours.

 

Alan.

 

 

[fly_tornado]

80Knots engine failure = jabiru 2200

 

 

[eightyknots]

80Knots engine failure = jabiru 2200

Thanks, f_t

 

 

[Motif]

Col,

 

In response to your post, you will note that I said that in essence, the only way I could reasonably get a handle on whether the critics of Jab engines had a point or not, was to go back through the RAAus magazines. It may be that had my sample size been larger it could have shown a smaller number of Jabiru engine incidents or maybe a larger number. The only people with a really accurate 'feel' would be Jabiru themselves.

 

I don't want to go all pedantic here, but engines like to be used. I would much prefer to buy a county car with more kilometres from long drives, than a city car that has a few less k's but has only ever been driven down the shop and to church on Sunday. Why, because engines that get used more, don't get clogged up with crap that cause them to under-perform when used. Most of the wear on the engine occurs in the first few minutes of starting and continues until the components and the oil heats up to normal operating temperatures.

 

I was making two points in respect to my earlier post, the first was that if the engine on a Hyundai Excel conks out on an 18 years old drive, she / he can pull over and call the NRMA. If that same driver, now being a new solo pilot, has an engine failure at 250 feet AGL, the consequences of that engine stopping can be catastrophic. The second point is that there are an awful lot of recreational training aircraft also running Rotax engines. And the fact that some Foxbats and Lightwings are rarely used would probably mean they are more likely to end up in the 'Pilot's Notes' section than those Rotax engines that are used every day. Any LAME's reading this are more than welcome to add your input here.

 

 

[coljones]

Motif,

 

Agree with everything you have said but any engine being used at 10 hours a week will last longer than one being at 20 hours per week - all other things being equal, twice as many weeks longer. They might both crap out at the same number of hours run, just that the one used less frequently will only appear on the stats at half the rate (all things being equal). That doesn't mean that the engine lasting twice the calendar weeks is twice as good or twice as safe.

 

My father had a fully refurbed Gypsy Major engine in the garage for over 20 years - never missed a beat in all those years - but never ever run for all those 20 odd years.

 

We need some useful stats so we can compare like with like. I am not sure that a simple incident count achieves that.

 

I must come to Cowra and check out the Brumby one Sunday!

 

Col

 

 

[Motif]

Col,

 

I agree that in an ideal world it would be great to be able to do an objective comparison between the Jab and Rotax engine, however in the real world, we can only use what we have got. And in this case, the most objective tool I had was the incident reports in the RAAus magazine. The other alternative was to accept at face value, the massive amount of negative comments from the "general" recreational aviation users and buyers.

 

Let me give you a quick run down on my introduction to Jabiru engines. Coming from G.A. and ignorant about all things recreational (aircraft I mean) I thought it would be good get back to basics and so I bought an X-Air with a low time Jab 2200 engine. It looked like fun and the X-Air was fun. As a result of the X-Air, I met the RAAus fraternity in the form of three CFI's (who subsequently became friends) and all of whom warned my about the Jab engine. One CFI flatly refused to fly the X-Air. My instructor (CFI / friend) explained why the Jab engine was going to be a problem in the long term. I kept fighting him / them by saying that the reason for all the bad publicity is that there are simply twice as many Jabiru's out there so obviously engine problems are going to show up more frequently.

 

Now those days are long gone and I've been flying high performance LSA's with Rotax engines ever since. But I've also had the chance to speak with heaps more of RAA type people including people with first hand experience of engine failures on the Jab, but even accepting the population difference I think I have only heard of one personal account of a Rotax failure, and even that was second hand.

 

I would love to report that all the bad publicity you hear about Jab engines was baseless as I'm a strong supporter of Australian products - and the "Australian built" aspect was part of the reason I purchased a Brumby aircraft. The problem is that, in respect to the Jabiru engine, if it looks like a duck, waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck, you've probably got yourself a duck.

 

If I were running Jabiru, years ago I would have thrown whatever resources were necessary to make sure the engine as bullet proof as I could possibly make it. Rotex in Melbourne have manufactured some apparently excellent water cooled heads for the big Jab engine and I think some other stuff as well. The issue is then back to the problem that started this thread, and that is if you modify their engine and Jabiru don't certify that mod, you have to take the aircraft out of 24 and put it into 19.

 

It will be good to see you one Sunday and I'll see if we can get Paul to show you the new high wing Brumby as well.

 

Ross

 

 

[planedriver]

Motif, i've always liked the Jabiru concept, being Aussie-built and well priced, and the basic hull integrity seems to be great.

 

Sometimes in life, we get what we pay for.

 

I've flown a few Jabiru's and loved every minute that i've spent in them, however, at the back of my mind, there's always been a bit of concern about what if the fan suddenly stops turning?

 

I'd love to think that this great Aussie product was up with what the rest of the world has to offer, but sadly statistics seem to possibly show another side to the story.

 

With all that i've learned from others on these forums over the years, plus hearing about water-cooled heads, optional fuel-injection mod's etc; I realise that people would not even bother to invest heaps of time and money in developing these items, if they didn't think there was a bit of problem to be solved.

 

Cheap, dosen't necessarilly mean unreliable, My sister-in-law has a little Hyundi Excel with just over 300,000 clicks on it, she's only ever had to pay out for a new battery and regular servicing. It's starting to blow just a tad of smoke now, but with oil changed every three months regardless, it still dosen't miss a beat.

 

I do so hope that Jabiru can attain a level of reliabilty approaching what buyers would want to reasonably expect long term, so they can make an Aussie Aviators potential icon, live up to their reasonable expectations.

 

Go for it, Bunderberg Boys!

 

 

[Motif]

Planedriver, I agree, and I think that the Rotex guys have gone a large part of the way to solving a hard problem. And you are right about that niggling thought in the back of you head - is this going to be the day. A doctor friend of mind with a Jabiru who has had an engine failure now wears a parachute. My first Brumby had a Jab 3300 engine and I loved the sound and the performance of that engine, but my wife was learning to fly and so I spend the money and had the Brumby guys change to engine to a Rotax 912s. I slept more comfortably then.

 

Please don't think I am dumping on Hyundai. I love Hyundai cars and engines, they are great. If I could justify one I would buy an i30. OK here's all the sexist stuff now. There is a very high percentage of young women driving Hyundai Excel's. An engine failure in an Excel would be no big deal for her, but that same chick (as a new solo student) would be in a pile of strife if her engine suddenly stopped at a critical point on take-off. Hell, how many of us would climb out unscathed from a total engine failure at 250 ft AGL? So that was my only point in respect to Hyundai.