On Mon, 06 Oct 2003 18:19:44 -0500, Barnyard BOb --
wrote:

Geez, Bob.

The guys who are successfully flying auto conversions,
as we speak, are where? Here in RAH? I know of ONE.
All I get is **** from the wannabees.. projecting their brand of
warm fuzziest and what they are gonad do or finish SOME DAY.

Barnyard BOb -- Lamar look alike? Hmmmm.

Hard as this may be to believe, not everyone who owns a homebuilt,
powered by auto conversion or not, knows about or cares about
Recreational Aviation Homebuilt.

Just because they don't post here doesn't mean they don't exist.
There are many reasons for this, not the least of which is that the
"in-your-face" intimidating nature of many respondents drives them
away, or makes them reluctant to post.

For the record, the reverend Ron Van der Hart flew a Buick engined
Pawnee for years, saw him at Oshkosh in '95, he sells a video on the
conversion.

Fred Geschwender built PSRU's for big block Fords to be used for
dusting operations. He's gone now but his business continues.

Johnny Lindgren, who now owns Northwest Aero has been selling engines
and PSRU's for years.

Andy Venable flew behind a Mazda engine for years before switching to
an aircraft engine. Why did he switch? Because it froze on him while
taxiing out for takeoff one day. He thinks it may be because he'd
tilted the engine for the installation, which he guesses screwed up
the oil system, eventually.

Speaking of Mazda's, there's Tracy Crook, who's flown a 13B powered
RV4 for five years or more now.

Then there's Jim Stewart in the Stewart S-51 Chevy V-8 powered Mustang
replica.

Belted Air Power makes PSRU's for Chevy V-6's and has been flying
behind a Chevy V-6 powered RV4 for years. Bill Phillips has flown it.

Jan Eggenfellner has been making Subaru auto conversions for at least
6 years and has sold several hundred units.

There was an engineer, a friend of Ron's, who flew behind a Ford
powered BD-4 for a number of years. He died flying a Gyro a few years
ago. His was the voice of reason and articulate examination of auto
conversions.

There's the guy, forget his name but he used to be the force behind
"Hurst" shifters, who modified a Chevy V-8 to be used in Lancair IV's.
It puts out 420 horsepower. He won the inaugural race from Kittyhawk
to Oshkosh flying that airplane. The engine is now being built and
sold in Auburn Maine.

Bruce Frank figures there are about 200 or so owners of V-6 Stol's
some of whom have hundreds of hours on them. Several have over 1,000
and one guy accumulated 2,000.

I have a Mpeg of a guy making his maiden flight in a Subaru powered
Comp Monster down in Florida. He had no problems.

Jerry Schweitzer did a busines building Ford V-6's and has flown to
many airshows to display his V6 Stol and his more recent Ford V-6
powered RV4. I have his video in which he describes the various
modifications he makes on the engine to make it reliable. The video
concludes with him flying around for 15 minutes in the Stol to show it
off.

There are others, they just don't post here.

Do they fail? Of course, so do professionally installed certified
engines. If you do the work yourself, if you are qualified to do so,
you can have a zero time engine that puts out at least 180 horsepower
for about $5,000 to $6,000. I have about $2400 in the engine at this
point. I still have to buy the radiator and hoses and the ignition
system. I also have to fabricate the exhaust system. My desire is to
include a muffler in the system so as to keep noise levels down while
in flight.

Corky Scott