As an owner of a Thielert engine I just received a letter from the administrator. Apart from the usual blah-blah on the success of this sale it says that 'this sale includes the entire civil business ops of CAE and TAE'. So maybe the sales to the US military have been kept out or structured in a different way so that the Chinese do not become such a high profile supplier to a high profile military segment like drones? Maybe I am talking nonsense here, but it just caught my eye. I suspect that the military business is what kept Thielert afloat over the past years.
I wonder how many units Thielert actually sells to UAV contractors? Or to contractors or the US Army directly as replacements? My impression is that new diesel powered UAVs are not exactly flying out the door, I believe only the Army has them, but that replacement engine sales might support a small company. Regardless, Chinese ownership of anything going on a UAV would be a big deal. On that basis I'd guess their days in the UAV business might be numbered, unless something fairly major was done to firewall military engines.
Re Continental, they've gone in a lot of directions with engineering and product development over the last 40 years. There was the high rpm, thereby fuel inefficient Tiara series of the 70s with cam driven props, arriving just in time for increased fuel prices. Then water cooled heads in the 80s, then a joint venture with Honda that went nowhere in spite of a very nice looking flat four prototype. Then some CAD cartoons of entirely new in-house concepts that were discontinued. Notwithstanding current Chinese ownership, this does fit the historical pattern!
Silvaire,
well, this time they buy a finished product, so maybe they can really do something with it. I do hope so...
If there is any truth in this, and presumably there is othewise why did Mr Thielert go to jail, I would expect the "super ethical" US purchasers to be very thin on the ground, sooner or later, and basically as soon as they can sort out another supplier.
America is into all kinds of "ethical" stuff these days. Many electronics suppliers are struggling with the "conflict minerals" declarations, which involve certifying that nothing comes from the Congo, etc, which is kinda difficult to be sure of when you are buying e.g. tantalum capacitors from Japan ..... so everybody signs the forms and sends them off to the next layer below them, where everybody signs the forms and sends them off to the next layer below them, etc.
Interesting to see that Conti's Chinese owners have just bought Thielert
Here's what happening on their military business: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/23/thielert-avic-idUSL6N0FT2G620130723
Thanks for that - the link says the military business is being shut down. Without the military business, I'd imagine the sales price to AVIC/Continental would have been very, very low - which makes sense if you're scratching your head wondering why they'd buy Thielert.
Thielert's major business in recent times has been to US Army programs, and neither new or existing Army aircraft are going away. So one could imagine military rights having been sold separately and that military end-use engines of the same design might still be produced elsewhere in the future, by others.
There is a good long article on diesels in the last US AOPA magazine.
Apparently SMA are working on a 400HP version, planned to be ready in 2015. I wonder if that will still have the IO540 dimensions and mountings? Probably not.
Apparently SMA are working on a 400HP version, planned to be ready in 2015. I wonder if that will still have the IO540 dimensions and mountings? Probably not.
They had it at their booth in Friedrichshafen this year. It looks massive, larger than the IO-540. The current 4-cylinder has IO-540 dimensions and also power. With their impressive TBO it seems likely they can increase the HP but this will require a bigger turbocharger and the current one (which they developed inhouse because with the previous model the turbocharger was the bottleneck) is already impressive.
Turning the working 4-cylinder design into a 6-cylinder design is rather "straightforward". Most people don't know this but there is a 8-cylinder version of the Lyco IO-540, called the IO-720. It is still supported but very rare.
I would have thought that the market OEM/retrofit Cessna 206 would be massive and I've always been surprised that they never aimed there initial engine design at that market/power range in the first place.
