Coninental/Thielert
So it's been 6 months since Continental (through its Chinese parent company)bought Thielert and its troublesome line of Centurion aerodiesel engines. I'm just wondering what they were thinking. The Centurion 2.0 still has a low (1200hr)TBO and the dreaded 300hr gearbox inspections, yet they have their own TD300, a version 1.0 of the SMA engine which seems to have the best tack record to date. Continental will have to spend bucketloads of cash to get it working right.
The other problem I have is how the diesel manufacturers are starting to get the engines to market. Private owners will not fly enough hrs to find all the bugs. They should be going to a flying school that flys 200,000 hrs a year, giving them a who fleet of engines to rack up hrs quickly.
I do think aerodiesels will ultimately make gasoline engines obsolete, but its going to take a lot of time and even more $.