Lycoming engine fails! Pilot survives!

On Mon, 24 Nov 2003 22:40:13 GMT, Roger Halstead
wrote:


Who is the guy near Lakeland that uses, or used the Aluminum small
block Chevy in the Lancair IV-P? Think it was just shy of 400 cu
inch.

He did a lot of testing including dyno work.
After he had the front web separate on take off he went out and
purchased the equipment to cast his own blocks. He figured the front
web was too weak to take the PSRU stresses.

I talked to him at Oshkosh a few years back and he figured that he had
over 7 figures into the engine operation at that time.
Admittedly there are few of us who can afford to do that, but he was
developing a lot of useful information the rest of us could, or might
be able to use.

He had flown the rig to Oshkosh from Lakeland in about 3 hours, so
that sucker did haul. Don't know about engine life and durability
though.

You'll have to fix the return add due to dumb virus checkers, not spam
Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair?)
www.rogerhalstead.com

That would be Jim Rahm of Enginair. In a former life he was the no. 2
guy behind "HURST" as in Hurst shifters. Auto's and hotrodding were
his life, until he discovered aviation. Hotrodding an airplane just
seemed a natural to him.

You're right, the engine had a LOT of engineering and dyno development
and so far has performed flawlessly. The PSRU on the other hand, has
been problematic. The PSRU was the one thing he felt should be done
by people who knew how to do them, and contracted NIS to develop one.

To make a long story short, the PSRU did not work well and things have
been in litigation for a while. Making a PSRU to handle 120 to 180
horsepower is one thing, making one to handle over 400 horsepower is
something entirely different.

Corky Scott