Peter wrote:
Isn’t that the old SMA 230HP flat four?
Yep :
In 2008, Teledyne Continental’s new president, Rhett Ross, announced that the company is very concerned about future availability of 100LL avgas, and as a result will develop a Diesel engine in the 300 hp (220 kW) range for certification in 2009 or 2010.3
Rather than develop a new Diesel engine from scratch, Continental decided to license an existing design to develop. The company did not release details on which engine they licensed, but the aviation media have identified it as the French SMA SR305-230 engine.45
They licensed the old design from SMA which had bad altitude performance and now appear to have done some of the same improvements SMA have done on the E version of the engine.
The more interesting engine will be Continental’s 6 cylinder Mercedes engine with 300+ HP.
Does that mean that as this engine has Faa approval then fitting it onto a Cessna 182 would be easier?
No, the SMA engine has had SMA approval for a long time (based on EASA approval). What you need is an STC for the airframe and that costs a lot of time and money to develop. SMA owns such an STC for their first generation engine, don’t know if it is still available.
I thought that was one if the problems Cessna had. Rather than using the FAA based on EASA approval they decided to get the engine fully FAA certified and this was one if the reason s they had problems.
I assume the continental engine will have FAA approval (not based off the back of the EASA approval) and will therefore be more exceptable to Cessna?
Cessna would have to do the same test program for the Continental engine.
It was a stupid mistake to try to start from scratch with FAA. The FAA have never certified a diesel engine and know nothing about that stuff. What good can come from that when there was an easy path? EASA have many years of experience with aircraft diesels and an excellent safety record.
Any news on the Diamond DA20 Diesel ? There was a mock up on the Aero 2015 but never heard anything since then.
Diesel is appealing because you can run Jet-A which is cheaper than 100LL. But the engines are limited in size and horsepower right now. Notice the new Mooney 10T and 10J will have the Continental CD-135/155.
The TCM V-6 Diesel (based on the Mercedes OM642 car engine) under development will have the same 310 hp as the IO-550 in the SR22.
The main driver for diesel was cost per liter…When this thread started oil was around $95/bbl….it is now around $30/bbl….Accordingly Avgas is also much cheaper now…so it makes it even harder for Diesel to taxy out…let alone take-off…
