Sorry for the delays on this item, unfortunately the item is out of stock with Aircraft Spruce there is an ETA on their website of early November, I will chase them up to double check but normally they only advise what is on the website. Are you happy to leave on back order?
Better to order directly from the US – as with most things in Europe 
Have they given you any indication of delivery time?
Silvaire wrote:
I hadn’t checked the Corona Aircraft Engines website for overhaul pricing in a while and it’s probably telling that everything Continental is listed as N/A or “Call for Pricing”. A lot of the Lycomings are similar. e.g. “updating” but for whatever reason a 150 HP Lycoming O-320 is listed as being between $19K and $24K depending on the cylinder spec chosen, about what it’s always been. Link. O-360s are are listed in a similar range. In combination these are the most common engines in the US trainer fleet, with small Continentals being unusual for training at this point.
Looking at the link, those are the prices to overhaul your unit?
I can’t be sure, but I believe @Bathman was referring to prices to actually buy an overhauled engine.
Landing gear bungees are the latest shortage for those of us who have rag and tube tailwheel aircraft.
Doing the annual on the Auster. Some landing gear corrosion needed fixing, and the leg had to come off to do it. Fortunately the bungees didn’t have to be cut because they are impossible to get at the moment.
I hadn’t checked the Corona Aircraft Engines website for overhaul pricing in a while and it’s probably telling that everything Continental is listed as N/A or “Call for Pricing”. A lot of the Lycomings are similar. e.g. “updating” but for whatever reason a 150 HP Lycoming O-320 is listed as being between $19K and $24K depending on the cylinder spec chosen, about what it’s always been. Link. O-360s are are listed in a similar range. In combination these are the most common engines in the US trainer fleet, with small Continentals being unusual for training at this point.
At this price some aircraft will go into the scrap press when the engine is dead.
A factory overhauled O-200 is now 46K.
If thats not a statement that GA is under threat then I don’t know what is.
The situation with structural stress and reboring of aircraft engine cylinders is more analogous to that of a car engine with wet cylinder liners than it is to a monoblock engine with cast in liners that can be rebored several times. With the wet liner engine (e.g. Jag V12, Alfas and Diesels) you replace the liner instead of reboring. It’s not a perfect analogy however as aircraft cylinders unlike both wet liner and air-cooled VW etc engines etc have no through studs to hold the cylinders onto the crankcase – the cylinder itself is in tension.
Re welding aluminum cylinder heads, the issue is achieving the same fatigue strength in the welded area that was in the original cast alloy, as cast the first time. This is the reason for weld procedures, FAA guidance etc. Welding is basically a relatively uncontrolled local casting process that in addition to removing the crack erases the previous fatigue history in the local area. Meanwhile crack propagation at smaller scale continues in other similarly stressed areas on the same part, although it’s often very slow and checking the part for cracks at overhaul is frequently adequate to assure a reasonable service life from that time on. The assessment is based on experience with a given engine, and there is a lot of useful experience with many aircraft engine cylinder head designs. As @Peter points out, this is part of the flexible aircraft engine ‘eco-system’ that gets things done and helps control overhaul cost and availability when it becomes necessary, as it now has.
