"Paul Folbrecht" wrote in message
hlink.net...
How common is this? I am seeing some 152s for sale with engines as high
as 3000 hours SMOH. Surprising. (Well, to me!)


It's not uncommon for a plane regularly flown and maintained (i.e., a good
flight school) to stretch way beyond TBO. Our club 172 was several hundred
hours beyond TBO and still going strong. TBO is only advisory for us.
small fry

Related question (probably nearly impossible to answer): to what degree
is an engine's reliability related to it's time SMO?

It's not.

Obviously, it has
to be that a Lyc at 2200 hours is more likely to fail than one at 200,

TBO is NOT Time Between Failures. It's just the manufacturer's idea of
when the thing needs to be opened up and inspected.

but what are people's opinions? My FBO did just tell me of a gent who
had his O-320 put a rod through the crankcase at 140 hours.. and
apparantly Lyc isn't covering it.

TBO isn't warranty either.

And this wasn't a hangar queen sitting for years either.

It doesn't need to sit for years...but I bet it took more than two years to get the 140
hours which doesn't mean it's flown regularly enough to maximumize the engine
life either.