Could you identify the posters who fly other people's aircraft? For my part, it's my engine. My life depends on it.
Every pilot’s life depends on it. It doesn’t change the facts. But I’ll rmatch your life and raise it by the 6 other pilots and hundreds of pax our company moves each and every day of the week your chosen metric for the value of opinion is the human cost of being wrong.
So why have my engines gone hundreds of hours past TBO when run on "interesting theories" rather than your evidently scientifically-based "55% power setting and slightly rich"?
Nobody is saying the only way to get an engine to TBO is to run “slightly rich at 55% power”. The question is whether running lean at high power will cause detonation. The hard facts are the manufacturer has demonstrated to the certifying authority that the engine does not detonate at the recommended power and mixture settings. At some point above those power settings the engine will begin to detonate if you lean far enough. And yes, I do know that if you lean even further it may stop detonating, but that is because the power would begin to drop again.
Oggers mentioned certification. My engine is certified to run at maximum rated power, continuously, to TBO.
Your engine is NOT certified to make TBO at any setting. The TBO is a recommendation for private ops and a limit for commercial ops. There is nothing in the certification that requires the engine to make TBO if run continuously at 100% of max rated power and it is bizarre that any pilot would hold such an opinion.