The death of the A-65?

wrote

I see way more cars at the side of the road than I hear of
airplanes having engine failures, even with making allowance for the
many times more cars than airplanes in operation.

Most have exceeded their reliable life, IMHO.

Aircraft engines fail
mostly for the following reasons:
1. Out of gas. Not an engine fault, is it?

Can't argue that point! g

2. Carb ice. That's a pilot's mistake, not the engine's.

True, but with *modern* fuel injection, that isn't an issue.

3. Low oil pressure. Usually due to running out of oil, either because
it wasn't checked and topped up, or because the engine wasn't looked
after and it leaked out through the same leaks it had been leaking from
for several years, or through a blown oil hose that had been in service
for 28 years. They are 5-year items.

Auto engines don't use oil in the quanities that airplane engines do,
partially because they are aircooled, and have to have looser fits. Auto
engies with less than 1500 hours on them don't use a quart between oil
changes.

4. Mechanical failure. This come is a wide variety of expensive noises,
and most of them have to do with poor maintenance, or infrequent
flying, which causes corrosion internally that leads to the failure.
Mechanical failure is actually relatively rare. It's the first three
causes above that bring most airplanes down where engines are
concerned. Remember that most crashes are weather or pilot induced and
have nothing to do with the engine at all.

No arguement, on most of these points... except what you cite as "relatively
rare."

As far as blowing jugs or breaking rods or hanging valves: Try
making an auto conversion run at 75 power for a few hours and see what
begins to happen. They weren't designed for that,

Sorry, I don't buy that. Production engines for some manufacturers go
through testing far more severe than what an air cooled airplane engine has
to go through. Corky Scott needs to post his 'ole "test story" again.

and the guys who
successfuly convert and run them for several hundred hours have had to
get around a LOT of problems.

Mostly due to accesories failures, I'll bet.

Dan (Aircraft Maintenance Engineer, homebuilder, and Flight
instructor, with installing a Soob in GlaStar experience)

IMHO, soobs have weaknesses, and are putting out more power to weight (and
displacement) than what is reasonable to expect. Some are using them, with
fairly good result, but it would not be my first choice.

As a side note, I don't think that everyone flying lycosarus engines are
flying a death trap. I just think that it is time for engine development to
move on. The problem is (of course) that there is not high enough demand
(in numbers of units produced) for the manufacturers to get the development
costs paid off.

By the way, how did your installation go? Any stories to share?
--
Jim in NC