A Simple Auto Engine Conversion

"cavelamb himself" wrote in message
...
wrote:

Steve Wittman did it with the aluminum Buick V-8, direct drive.
The buick was a rather small V-8 of around 260 cubes, and was pretty
light, too. Steve's Tailwind was designed to fly on engines of 85 to
150 hp, and the Buick was able to produce, IIRC, around 120 hp. Dry
sump, though the Buick's crankcase is a lot different than any
inverted V's (or inverted inlines) built for aircraft, which have the
cylinders separate from the case instead of cast in, and those
cylinders extend into the case a little to prevent most of the oil
draining into them. The Buick would have some difficulty with that.



Responding to this part, Steve ran that Buick -inverted-.

So that's not a "bolt it in" direct drive conversion.
Lots of interesting machine work.

No explanition as to why, but plugs didn't last long in it.
IIRC, 20 or 25 hours - and they broke.

Anyway, he finally finally replaced it with a 150 HP Lycoming.


--

Richard

I was unaware of the spark plug problem.

The machine work did not seem unreasonable, and I still have a set of the
plans somewhere; but the complete installation does weigh at least as much
as the Lycoming O-320, those engines are now seriously long in the tooth,
the low compression O-320 is about as reliable as an engine can ever be, and
there is also the age old argument that "time is money!"

Peter