scsirob

According to Rod's letter and this was also told to me about ten years ago , they did not put the pressure on Ian to increase the investment -the way Rod tells it they actively discouraged him to increase his debt. but he did so anyway.

Could both be true. Rod may have adviced Ian against going into debt and outsource instead, but in the end someone will need to buy the bl**dy machines and do the work. It would just mean someone else holding the stick. Ian may have had a moment of grandure and gambled. Not many people saw the WFC coming, and chosing between outsourcing and taking 5% margin, or investing and taking 25% with 5 years ROI @ 50 engines per month or so may have been a safe decision at the time. Things have changed dramatically. Benefit of hindsight is 20/20.

 

 

At the risk of repeating this, if there is a consortium then investing in it might be a good idea.

A bit tongue-in-cheek, but perhaps set up a crowd fund action? Sell certificates? There's 7000 engines out there. If each owner invests $500 then you have $3.5M to restart the business. Certificate owners get maintenance parts at 25% discount.

 

 

Do they distort? If that was common it would show when dismantled.

There's always been issues with case fretting, indicating the case halves moved around. CAMit apparently had a process in place to improve this, but only time will tell. Don't think too many CAMit engines have been opened up yet to see if it was effective.

 

 

.. Ian is tooled up for a certain process and would no doubt forcefully promote his self interest if he believes fully in the direction he has chosen.

Well, at 2006 they were gearing up to 90 engines a month, and Ian had just invested to make that happen. I wouldn't blame him if he would dismiss a request to change to a different process just after he just plunked a couple million into CNC gear. Maybe they even had contractual agreements. If I was in Ian's position, I wouldn't want to make huge investments for my single customer without some commitment either.

 

 

If you read recent news on the D Motor site, they appear to be having much grief obtaining reliable castings. The Camit process of fully machined components is probably a relatively expensive process but they are quality reliable components every time.

True. They are successful in making their own castings for the 4-cylinder, but the 6-cylinder turns out to be too hard for them to make in-house. At least they are being honest about it.

 

 

No, because ridiculous price. At that price point you would be entertaining far more famous brands starting at Rotax, it is a retail business, not a personal choice situation.

Talk to them. AUS$ is strong, and retail price != OEM price.

 

No, opposite, there's plenty of reading here and on the net about Jabiru and CHTs.

I am well aware of Jabiru's cooing margins. I meant the example of the Maico engines.

 

 

Maico 400, 1971, 1975 and 1981, probably close to a 50% reduction in finning...

But anyway, what you have posted is to insinuate that Jab's 15 fins won't work as well as previous 20 fins without any evidence at all, I just posted factual examples where reducing fin area has worked for major manufacturers operating air cooled engines under extreme conditions.

Pure speculation on my side perhaps, but could the manufacturer have found out that the earlier heads actually were overly effective and they could drive down cost by digging a bit into the design margins?

 

 

Perhaps if Rod wants simple, reliable, and light, he should talk to D-Motor. They have a 4-cylinder 2.7l and a 6-cylinder 4.0l flat-head engine, with nicasil barrels, impossible for valves to ruin an engine, direct drive, water cooled and same mount as 2200/3300 engines. I'm sure he will be reminded of the KFM adventure, but by making proper arrangements regarding IP, Jabiru can get themselves a new engine that is way beyond the prototype state, and without the finnicky air cooling issues.

 

I believe there's actually a Jabiru airframe already equipped with a D-Motor

 

 

If Jabiru can bring the new motor online in a timely fashion the can corner the market.

In Rod's latest message he mentioned having bought large quantities of engines to keep CAMit afloat, keeping over 360 in stock at one time. Don't known when that one time was, but presumably they have not cranked out hundreds of Jabi's since then? Rod will want to sell that existing stock before introducing the new engine for general availability. Look up "Osborne effect". That may already be happening.

Meanwhile, Sue's first response mentioned that demand was down to very, very low numbers. In light of those pieces of information I would be surprised if the new Jabiru engines would come online quickly and if they'd sell like hot cakes. Even if they are perfect as of serial number 001.

 

 

Can we please get back to the thread CAMit Closing. I am not interested in the political reasons why. More interested in what can be done to help those that have bought a CAMit engine and now have something that is no longer supported. Those who purchased helped to support a local buisiness unlike the main user of the engine who has gone offshore due price.

Good day all. My first post here. I purchased a CAMit engine three months ago, for all the reasons quoted here before; CAMit fixed issues instead of denying the issues exist, and Ian ( but also Brydan and Jenny) are terrific people to work with. I am from Europe so I wasn't looking to support any 'local' business. I was out to get a Jabiru 3300 version 2.0 that behaves properly. Getting a latest version genuine Jabiru was no option for me, due to very unfavorable support experiences in Europe.

 

As for parts, I am seeing good initiatives on Yahoo groups for group purchases of parts that are specific to CAMit engines. That will help. What will not help is that requests for parts to Jabiru dealers now go unanswered. Coïncidence? Perhaps. It would be really, really sad if Jabiru has instructed their dealers to keep parts from CAMit users. I'm keeping a sharp lookout for the future. Meanwhile my CAMit engine has ran beautifully for 10 hours. If it is as good and as reliable as I hope then my first parts issue will be in 990 hours from now when the first top-end is due. We'll see..