I know of some "old" twin piston pilots who had something like 10 engine failures in a few thousand hours, but I never asked them who maintained their engines, whether they did oil analysis, did they run them at 65% 75% 85% 100% (??) power?? Max CHT? You name it.
Data from the USA suggests the MTBF of a typical IO-540 type engine is several tens of thousands of hours. With a 2000hr overhaul period and everything (supposedly) NDTd at that point, the vast majority of pilots should never see an engine fail catastrophically.
Yet only the other day I saw a big piston twin, with a brand new overhauled engine (maybe 10hrs on it) throw a conrod out of the crankcase. The big end split. I would really like to know whether the outfit that "overhauled" that engine did any NDT on the conrods - or anything else!
If you are an aircraft owner, you have a multitude of methods of drastically improving the odds. Like not using known cowboys for maintenance, and following best-practice engine management methods.
If you are a renter, then you don't have that control. But you do have an advantage: the plane is probably flown so mcuh by others than if it is going to break, it is likely to break when somebody else is flying it
