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Premature Camshaft / Cam Follower failure

With less than 2 years and 200h on them the factory paid for a new set of tappets and a new camshaft. But yours is probably out of any warranty and the price of those parts would only be a small part of your total bill anyway. It is a bad situation they make bad parts and make money again by selling you the replacement parts to fix the problem.
In fact I read somewhere that they came up with the idea of roller tappets mainly because they no longer have a good source for the traditional tappets…

www.ing-golze.de
EDAZ

In my business we buy metal containers from China and Finland. The material is the same according to the cast certificate but in practise the Chinese steel shatters if you belt it with a hammer on a really cold day.

That to me suggests the Chinese are forging (no pun intended) their documents.

There is a process for making steel and if you follow it you will get a certain steel with certain characteristics.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

they make bad parts and make money again by selling you the replacement parts to fix the problem.

100% my view – gripe
And the cost of the sub-standard components, as you say, is only relatively small compared to the think £4000 (4800 euro) for the subsequent parts bill, PLUS ‘Remove Engine, ’Transport Engine’, ‘Strip Engine’, Re-build Engine, Return Transport, Re-install Engine.

Last Edited by WarleyAir at 18 Sep 07:38
Regret no current medical
Was Sandtoft EGCF, North England, United Kingdom

No way this has anything to do with how you’ve operated the aircraft. It’s plain and simply a faulty product. However, Lycoming will make money off their faulty product, just like they made money on the bad crankshafts. It’s a non-functioning industry without competition unfortunately.

Reading all this I am starting to think that it is not such a bad idea after all to fly little automotive-derived Diesels.
Yes, there is a TBR on the core of the engine and on various of its components. But it seems at least that there are no surprises in terms of not meeting these TBR’s.
At this point it is fair to say that the savings on fuel on Diesels are roughly off-set by extra costs of maintenance and the engine-replacement fund. But maybe the Diesel is more economical if all this unscheduled maintenance on Avgas engines mentioned above is factored in.. Plus of course the fact that even if you make it to TBO and have the Avgas engine overhauled, you apparently cannot always be sure that you have found a proper shop to do it.. Replacement, especially when talking mass-produced automotive engine cores, may just be a more secure option.

Just keeping the debate alive whether to continue with older engine technology or getting on the bandwagon of modern engine technology going

Private field, Mallorca, Spain

My Lycoming clone IOF-360 (Fadec) from Superior 2007 has the advantage that it has roller lifters
from Thielert instead of tappets . Also the geometry of cams is different because of roller .
To my experience this is the solution to Lycoming tappet problem and Lycoming has nowadays the same as option in new engines.
It takes time to see if roller lifters have own problems but in modern carengines these are reliable.

Matti
EFHV

Think the parts bill ONLY to repair all the carnage is £4000

This is of no help to you now but if oil analysis was being done, you may have got a much earlier warning.

The damage I see in the pics is caused by lots of big chunks of metal going around the engine.

I also strongly suspect that the oil filter may have not always been opened up in the past. That happens a lot in UK GA.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Lyco have been doing rollers since about 2001, FWIW.

They seem to work well but

  • need completely new crankcases so can’t be retrofitted (economically)
  • are a mandatory replacement on any shock load inspection so it’s a few k $ extra

The engine shop I use in the USA says there is no extra HP produced, for the same fuel flow.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

need completely new crankcases so can’t be retrofitted (economically)

I was told you can send in your crankcase and they will modify it to accept roller tappets. It was not that expensive but it takes time and there is no way back once you did the modification. Personally I decided against it because the roller tappets require perfect alignment with the cam. If something makes it turn or twist the result will probably bad. I can image failure modes which result in rather instantaneous disaster for the roller tappets where the traditional ones just degrade slowly.

www.ing-golze.de
EDAZ

but if oil analysis was being done, you may have got a much earlier warning.

Understood Peter – I’ve only been a ‘share holder’ for some six months and will have to ‘delve’ to see if ‘in-depth’ oil / filter analysis was done on a regular basis.
Even before getting my PPL (15 years ago), and due to general aviation reading, I understood that oil and filter analysis was mandatory at every change.
Just to clarify our aircraft use to be maintained at the same FAA shop that did the 2010 zero time rebuild, which is where the dismantled engine is right now.
However, for the last 12 months or so, day to day maintenance has been conducted at our airfield base, due to the ‘on site’ arrival of a FAA Engineer – saves ferrying the aircraft for routine work.
The last 100 hr. checks (the one that found the metal) was done by our new airfield based FAA Engineer and was the first one they did on the aircraft.
A comment was made by them (the new engineer) that what I learned was called the ‘screen’ (coarse filter that ‘catches’ big particles) seemed no to have been removed (for inspection) at previous ‘100 hours’ due it and its securing ‘wire’ were still painted in the ‘stock’ re-build grey paint.
I was present when it was finally removed and ‘large’ particles discovered. It was not a big operation and with a ‘check out’ (legal or not) could easily manage that ‘check’ myself – I even have the USA spanners / socket set !!

Last Edited by WarleyAir at 18 Sep 11:14
Regret no current medical
Was Sandtoft EGCF, North England, United Kingdom
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