Book Review:Maintenance/overhaul guide to Lycoming aircraft engines, Christy

Gene Kearns wrote:


This is typical "engineer" mentality.
I'd guess what you describe below to be a marketing mentality rather
than an engineering one.

If a product can be made more complex, or if it can be squeezed for
one more 1/2% of power, or if it could be installed in a smaller space
or made smaller somehow, or if it could run off of some boutique fuel,
it would absolutely obsolete everything coming before, regardless of
the original product's history.
Whether engineering or marketing driven, isn't a push for continual
improvement, even to the point of occasional failures like you point
out due to "overpushing", not desirable?

Some of these engines may not be that far from a 1937 tractor engine,
but, you know what? 65+ years later, we still haven't found anything
affordable and reliable enough to replace them.... AND if they were
sold for what they were *worth* they probably sell for less than $1000
per cylinder, new..... but that is another story....

I guess "worth" is subjective. They are worth far more than that to a
lot of pilots who fly behind them. And if pilots suddenly decided that
they would only pay $1,000 per cylinder, I wonder if any would be
made? I suspect that the increased market at that price would be small
enough that they could never get the economies of scale to manufacture
for that price.
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