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Engine reliability

Hi,

after several accidents in our proximity here, all of them involving a failure in some variant of Rotax engines, I am wondering if they are more prone to failure than Continental or Lycoming engines.
And yes, I know that statistically this might be nonsense, but it is at least fooling my eye :)

What are your thoughts on this? Is this just a coincidence?

Best regards
Lukas

LOWI,LIPB, Italy

lukepower wrote:

after several accidents in our proximity here, all of them involving a failure in some variant of Rotax engines, I am wondering if they are more prone to failure than Continental or Lycoming engines.
And yes, I know that statistically this might be nonsense, but it is at least fooling my eye :)

What are your thoughts on this? Is this just a coincidence?

What was reason? With that it will be guessing…
And re: which ones are more prone – depends who you talk to. If person flies mostly Lyconti, then they’ll say “Rotax is rubbish” and vice versa.
In reality, it might be just poor maintenance at that particular airfield, which affects only one type of engines, be that Rotax or Lyconti.

EGTR

Hi!

Paul Bertorelli did one of his brilliant studies from the US NTSB database and some other insights and came up with this:

from



Like all statistics, we are talking weighed dice here. A couple of examples:

Overall high-power engines (around 300hp and up) have a higher failure rate. The high-power cadre is more populated by Conti than Lyco so that skews it.
Overall low power engines (around 100hp) are highly represented by Contis in Cessna 150/152’s which are highly used for training and are prone to carb icing…easy to deal with by using carb heat
Overall Rotaxes in the US do not have widespread access to expert maintenance as Contis and Lycos do

So, in summary, it does not necessarily mean one brand is much worse than the other.

Extensively commented here

Last Edited by Antonio at 29 Sep 11:04
Antonio
LESB, Spain

arj1 wrote:

In reality, it might be just poor maintenance at that particular airfield, which affects only one type of engines, be that Rotax or Lyconti.

+1, or poor operation affecting only the Rotax engines…

Last Edited by Antonio at 29 Sep 11:05
Antonio
LESB, Spain

Antonio wrote:

Like all statistics, we are talking weighed dice here. A couple of examples:

@Antonio, it does not specify if those are 2-stroke or 4-stroke Rotax engines either, and there is a BIG difference. Of if it was a certified Rotax etc.
You are right, there is no point in measuring the average patient temperature across the whole hospital. :)

EGTR

We fly several Rotax’es in the flight school and never had a dramatic issue. Is this representative? Don’t know. I’d trust my life to a Rotax as I do with my Lyco.

Germany

I’d trust my life to a Rotax as I do with my Lyco.

I’d fly both, but trusting them with my life as in „no other option“… never. In a twin it’s another story, but piston engines fail far too often for my liking.

always learning
LO__, Austria

Snoopy wrote:

piston engines fail far too often for my liking

As far as I am concerned a single in flight total engine failure is one too many, but does that approach alone help to improve the situation?

Paul’s take on this, from the same video is this:

How is that related to engine make or even piston vs turbine?

As usual, the answer is a bit less evident than we would like…but we don’t need to think a lot to figure it out!

Antonio
LESB, Spain

Antonio wrote:

Overall low power engines (around 100hp) are highly represented by Contis in Cessna 150/152’

A moot point in reality, but the Continental O-200 is present only in the 150, of which relatively few remain; the 152 had a Lycoming O-235.

Could it be that the relative count of Rotax vs. Continental/Lycoming in the US might be a factor for the failure distribution (easier to rack up a high failure average with not a lot of engines, Rotax isn’t exactly popular in the US).

tmo
EPKP - Kraków, Poland

Thx @tmo!

Yes the video does mention both of your points. For low statistical significance, especially for Rotaxes, from min 19:30 aprox

Antonio
LESB, Spain
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