RV wrote: >I didn't say that Corvair engines are unreliable. I have no idea how many have failed while being used in aircraft. <
I guess you could have read the sentence "The main reasons I feel this way are due to the increased reliability and wt to power ratio offered by EFI", two different ways. I took it one way, and you meant the other. The thing about Soobs that worry me (other than the weight) are: 1) PSRU. One more mode of failure. You're flying behind something that's probably had very little engineering or testing. And even if it was "engineered", that's still some guy's best guess. Engines are just plain too complicated a system to accurately model and then be able to predict with any accuracy the torsional characteristics of the system, not to mention that it changes with every different prop combination that's tried. Torsional vibration is a dicey subject even for the "big boys". Designing a PSRU and building it at home is a roll of the dice until somebody's got a whole lot of hours on one. 2) Water. Another mode of failure. Spring a leak from any one of 8 or 10 places and you are going down shortly. This can't happen with air-cooling, period. 3) EFI. Any one of several wires can develop a bad connection and your engine might just quit instantly, regardless of how smart the computer, or how good it's memory is. The reliabilty that Soob cars enjoy is no longer a guarantee, now that you've ripped the whole thing out of a car and spliced it all back together in your plane. And they have to have electrical power to work at all. This is not an issue with a carburetor. You could argue that a chunk of debris could kill a carb, but that same chunk would kill the EFI too. I'm not arguing with you. Just call it a "debate". I'm unconvinced, and so are you, so we're even. I guess we'll just have to wait and see. I'm finally coming around to the concept of "keep it simple, and fly SOONER"... Mark Langford, Huntsville, AL N56ML "at" hiwaay.net see KR2S project at http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford
