"Real" Engine outs

[Chuck Ellsworth]

That's really irrelevant now, isn't it?

Only if you are lucky like me SNS3Guppy.

It's you unlucky types who have all those engine failures who I feel sympathy for.

One thing I am fairly certain of SN3Guppy from reading your posts I may not be a great pilot and sure as hell don't know all I should about everything in aviation, but I'm betting that if we compared our flying experience and time in the air I'm more lucky than you.

[Sleeve Wing]

RMarvin86.

Quote :> To keep this thread alive I think it may be really interesting to understand WHY you're (sic) engine failed! or the reason it may happen. <

The EFATO was not a TOTAL engine failure. Just sufficient power reduction (not even enough to maintain S & L) to leave no choice but to forced land , and quick.

Hot Gypsy Major/100LL fuel - caused exhaust valves on two cylinders to gum up. Resulted in couple of maintenance suggestions, one of which was to ream out the valve guides a few 'thou' more when zeroing engines after a rebuild.

Had the problem a couple of times before but not so drastic. Gypsys were designed for Low Octane fuels (non-leaded 73 Oct) not Low Lead. Lead reacts with aluminium-bronze and aluminium cylinder heads. Also hotter engine temps. caused lube oil to lacquer on the valve stems/guides, I believe.

Had another shutdown a long time ago due loss of oil pressure, via a mis-fitted NRV in the prop.control unit of a turboprop........ but that's another story !

[SNS3Guppy]

The EFATO was not a TOTAL engine failure. Just sufficient power reduction (not even enough to maintain S & L) to leave no choice but to forced land , and quick.

The majority of engine failures aren't complete engine failures or catastophic power loss. Partial power loss is indeed an engine failure, regardless of whether it requires a forced landing, or not.

A rough running engine...you just had an engine failure, whether you realize it, or not.

[Local Variation]

Basically the same for me.

Engine didn't pack up all together, but available power was not enough to sustain straight and level flight and being low level, their was little to debate.

The engine was removed and sent away for overhall as it only had around 50 hours to go anyway. We suspected some sort of carburettor contamination and I had been using a grass runway.

Recalling it now, I remember that as part of our cause for failure checks, the rpm went up immediately following the application of carb heat. Available power at that time was around 900rpm.

Once on the ground and post shutdown, the engine failed to start.

[Chuck Ellsworth]

A rough running engine...you just had an engine failure, whether you realize it, or not.

-------------------------------------------------------

So using that meaning of the words " engine failure " anytime you get a rough running engine caused by a fouled spark plug you have experienced an engine failure?

I'm afraid I do not subscribe to that simplistic an evaluation of what an engine failure is.

But hey Tiger , whatever turns your personal crank and makes you feel like you are living the life ...go for it.

[SNS3Guppy]

You know chucky, you're somewhat of a pompus ass, aren't you?

The majority of engine failures are partial power failures. No, a fouled plug doesn't necessarily constitute an engine failure...but you are probably bright enough to know that one doesn't always know if it's a fouled plug. You're going to advertise to the new private pilot on a private pilot's forum that one should make such a stupid assumption?

I've had one or two plugs out of 28 on an engine cause enough vibration that it needed to be shut down, and many other times when a simple mag change was enough. I've also had engines vibrating hard that felt very much like a fouled plug, but involved lifting heads, fuel flow fluctuation (and subsequent failure) in a 206, vibration due to propeller malfunctions, and other problems which one could be forgiven for believing were simply a fouled plug.

You're going to sit there and waffle on about your blessed experiences and suggest that each private pilot out there should dumbly make the assumption that vibration or other symptoms of a sick engine are merely a fouled plug?

I experienced a manifold pressure loss in an R2600, years ago; the engine ran like a top, but nothing more than barometric pressure. The clutch failed, and though we had no other indications, the engine was full of metal. Certainly mechanical problems warrant getting back on the ground soon enough. Certainly an engine doesn't have to produce no power to be a failed engine. If it's failing to function properly, it's failed. A partial failure is as good as a total one.

The TPE-331 I learned, can experience an oil loss and run for a half hour. In your little heaven, perhaps an engine flying around without oil isn't a failure. In my world, it resulted in a forced landing on a hillside during a forest fire. Perhaps you haven't had the benifit of that experience.

[fernytickles]

This is a really interesting thread that is a useful read to all & sundry.

And it will continue to be if Chuck & Guppy don't drag it into a personal "who's got a better engine failure story" contest. Obviously you've both had fascinating flying careers, with a lot of useful experiences that you can share and hopefully the rest of us can learn from. But not if the two of you resort to squabbling online. That acheives nothing.

As for me, the only engine failure I've had so far in 17 years resulted in the dreaded 3-engined approach in the 146 I have a piece (very small) of the engine in my logbook. The cause was a cracked fan blade coming loose and destroying the rest of the engine.

I've been incredibly lucky; long may it stay that way.

Great topic.

[Chuck Ellsworth]

Good point fernytickles, the private pilot forum is not the place for squabbling about who has done what and whos sand box is bigger.

So I shall apoligize to SNS3Guppy for being confrontational and shall refrain from getting into personal opinions regarding the difference between " Real " engine failures and other types of engine problems....

.....for sure it is possible to give the wrong message to new pilots and I don't want to do that.

And the time has long passed since I have a desire to measure dick size with other pilots anyhow.

[funfly]

As a PPL with quite a few hours but never an engine failure, it puzzles me why aircraft engines are prone to failing after all the controls and servicing when car engines with all their gadgets never seem to stop of their own accord these days. When did you last have the engine on your car stop dead - I havn't and I do about 30,000 miles a year?
Some posters on here seem to have had dozens of engine outs
So someone please explain why aircraft engines have higher failure rates than car engines.

[bookworm]

So someone please explain why aircraft engines have higher failure rates than car engines.

Bluntly, because aviation safety management has shot itself in the foot.

It's very expensive to change anything in aviation, particularly when it comes to the critical bits of an aircraft. And anything that might perform worse than the status quo is rejected. As a result, aviation is stuck with the status quo -- and for engines that means the ones that were designed in the 1950s -- which are probably considerably less safe than a modern alternative. But no one can afford to prove it.

[Local Variation]

Hazarding a guess and like yourself, spending alot of time behind the wheel.

The % actual RPM requested or used against % available RPM is alot higher in a light aircraft compared to my 320D.

I've never driven my car at full tilt with the RPM on max on the M40 , yet I do this everytime I launch myself down 27 at EGNX !!

Also, car engines today have alot more technology in them regarding reliability and management, or so they tell us. BMW actually told me last month that my current car has an adaptive engine management system that logs and takes into consideration my driving style (rpm, gear change and the like) and uses this information to produce the most efficient use of the engine / gearbox etc etc.

[bjornhall]

As a PPL with quite a few hours but never an engine failure, it puzzles me why aircraft engines are prone to failing after all the controls and servicing when car engines with all their gadgets never seem to stop of their own accord these days. When did you last have the engine on your car stop dead - I havn't and I do about 30,000 miles a year?
Some posters on here seem to have had dozens of engine outs
So someone please explain why aircraft engines have higher failure rates than car engines.

Have to recall that SNS3Guppy has had his engine failures to nothing less complex than an IO540 if I recall his last couple posts correctly... If someone put an R2600 in a C172 I wouldn't want to fly it. How often have you heard of an O320, O360 or IO360 packing up when it wasn't due to fuel starvation or carburettor ice? Happens, but it's rare as hell...

One would need to add some real statistics to this thread in order to discuss reliability of traditional light GA engines, Rotax lawn mowers, Thielert gizmos, and modern car engines... Such as the number of forum posts spawned by a failure in each category, and hence the perceived reliability...

I think the ones who really wouldn't want you to see reliability statistics are the car engine manufacturers...

[SNS3Guppy]

Have to recall that SNS3Guppy has had his engine failures to nothing less complex than an IO540 if I recall his last couple posts correctly... If someone put an R2600 in a C172 I wouldn't want to fly it. How often have you heard of an O320, O360 or IO360 packing up when it wasn't due to fuel starvation or carburettor ice? Happens, but it's rare as hell...

I believe I also identified small 65 hp powerplants such as the A65 or C65 (J-3 Cub), and the 0-200 (Cessna 150). To be included as well are the 0-320, and O-470/U-470 (Cessna 182, Cessna 310). Point is, it happens, and when it does, how well anyone else has prepared for it is completely irrelevant to you. How well you're prepared for it is all that's important.

Preparation is as much mental and emotional as it is training to put the airplane in the dirt or in the trees or water. Having thought through it an mentally briefed and prepared for the situation is important, but even more so is the ability to not live in the past. The sensation of "this can't be happening to me" is a natural one. However, the ability to let go of what used to be, and live with what is, becomes one of the single most important traits you can posses when things get quiet, or rough.

I've done a lot of work on the side to support my flying habits, including various duties that required the use of a firearm. That in turn required regular qualification with the firearm. One job involved protecting large sums of money. One of the range qualifications involved holding a money bag weighted down to resemble coins and cash. It was held in the shooting hand, and on a signal, one had to drop the bag, draw the duty sidearm, and engage two targets with two shots to the torso and one to the head, each. The number of shooters who attempted to transfer the money bag to their other hand, or who attempted to draw with the bag still in their hand, or who did nothing because they couldn't mentally let go of that bag, was very surprising. Especially under pressure. Seems so simple...just letting go. It's not simple.

Letting go of what was, whatever that may be, is crucial to survival. Don't be jaded into thinking that because an engine is "simple" then it's foolproof, or less failure prone. It isn't. It may be the carburetor; I've seen floats stick, jets plug, carb ice that builds extremely rapidly and engines that can't be restarted as a result, cylinder heads that lift, valves that fail, propellers that break, magnetos that disintegrate...it happens, and can happen to you. A finely tuned and well running engine is wonderful, but you fly the wing, not the engine. Whether the engine is there or not doesn't determine your ability to fly the airplane...just the trajectory you'll eventually take and the range ou have available to you. The airplane is still the same airplane it always was, still responds to your control inputs, and is still under your control when you lose power. You may lose some of it, you may lose all of it. Whatever you've lost (even if the throttle is stuck wide open, or the mixture control has frozen...I've seen those too) or are stuck with...fly it.

The truth is that the IO-540 isn't really much more complicated than the 0-200 or 0-320. It's a slightly bigger air cooled engine with a few more parts...but basically the same. Any engine can fail. Unlike a car, however, you don't simply pull over to the side of the road.

As a PPL with quite a few hours but never an engine failure, it puzzles me why aircraft engines are prone to failing after all the controls and servicing when car engines with all their gadgets never seem to stop of their own accord these days. When did you last have the engine on your car stop dead - I haven't and I do about 30,000 miles a year?

I've had a few cars quit over the years. Mostly older cars, which I tend to drive. I've been through several vans, each over 200,000 miles, and each have had engine failures, and transmission failures during that time. I have a suzuki samurai that's between engines...just going in for it's fourth engine. It will probably be going long after I'm gone. But engines aren't infallible. I drive about 85,000 miles a year or so in my personal auto.

Many of my mile are highway miles. Long stretches of ten hours or more, regularly, when I'm home. The engine lives a fairly easy life; constant RPM, relatively low demand, and it's climate controlled; a cooling system which keeps the metal in that engine under fairly constant conditions. The engine and transmission are fixed in the vehicle with essentially only one type of load.

Compare that to an aircraft engine which is exposed to the environment, is cooled by changing airflow, is largely magnesium and aluminum, rather than steel, and in many cases is a direct drive crankshaft attached to a large spinning disc which is subject to gyroscopic forces, air loads, and a varietyof moments. The engine may fly through a rainstorm with changing cooling characteristics, or be taking off on a hot dry desert day. The engine may sit on the front of an airplane that merely takes off, keeps a fairly constant power, and lands...or it may be on the front of an airplane that maneuvers hard and puts a lot of stress on the engine, propeller, and airframe. Some engines live very hard lives, some don't.

An engine failure in a car doesn't have nearly the psychological significance as one in an aircraft. It's not nearly as memorable, either. The engine in your airplane has some significant differences from the one in your car...the biggest similiarity being that they both have pistons. Bear in mind that it's not just piston engines that fail, though.

Rather than getting too wrapped around the axle about car engines, perhaps it's best to think in terms of the potential to lose any aircraft system. It could be landing gear, it could be hydraulic, it could be a flight control, a flight instrument, fuel, an electrical component or system. An engine failure may not be nearly as significant as a failure of a different kind...your assignment as pilot in command is to ensure that the flight is handled safely regardless of what quits, malfunctions, goes awry, or doesn't quite work as advertised. It happens.

In the past month or so I had a hydraulic pump case split...the pump pressurizing our brakes. I had a flap assembly fail and nearly leave the airplane. I had a smaller turbine engine used to provide electrical power and system air, fail (auxilliary power unit). A part of the electrical system on one engine, a Constant Speed Drive unit, failed. Various other conditions occured, each in different aircraft, each at different times, each handled by a particular checklist. Each of these conditions presented certain limitations we had to live with, but none of them were the end of the world. Aircraft are mechanical by nature, and mechanical things break, wear out, or operate in a manner sometimes for which they weren't designed. These things happen.

In light airplanes, I've had flaps fail. A wing crack. instruments and electrical quit. The year before last, an inflight fire. Again, it happens. The common component, which has absolutely nothing to do with measuring one's anatomy (but everything to do with getting on the ground safely) is how you address each situation. Each one is unique. Each one has a procedure, each one is controllable, each one can be handled...by you. Knowing your airplane, training as regularly as you can, reading, playing out scenarios in your mind, looking for traffic, looking for landing sites, avoiding putting yourself in untennable positions such as extended flight over water or flight in the clouds in single engine airplanes, etc...all go toward providing a successful outcome for you.

Bottom line is, it's all on your shoulders. Car or airplane.

[Piper.Classique]

small engines fail too

let me see now.....
An O-320 with low oil pressure, high temp, reduced power output; landed it before it quit
an O-360 with a mag drive failure yes I know you can select the non failed mag but on take-off that is a little tricky
an O-320 but could have been anything, the throttle cable stuck solid
an O-200 with two plugs out on the same pot
another one on an O-360
Cracked cylinders on glider tugs, various
a volkswagen in a falke with a both mags dying progressively, and simultaneously
don't ask about cars......I drive old cheap ones
I actually managed to nurse them all onto airfields except for the cars.
They don't have to be complicated to fail

[Big Pistons Forever]

In 5500 hrs I have had the following engine failures

DC 6 P & W R2800 3 Times (supercharger clutch, swollowed valve, broken pushrod)

S2F CW R1820 2 times (separated cylinder head , prop roll back )

PA31 Lyc LTIO 540 (seized shut waste gate = 18 in max MP)

PA39 Lyc IO 320 (fuel selector failed when switching tanks = no fuel to engine)

C150 Cont 0200 (oil pump drive failed = no oil press)

The moral of the story

1) If you fly big radials the more of them on your airplane the better.

2) Full/partial failures in light aircraft are most likely due to an accessory failure, not the engine itself

3) Despite previous posts all my light aircraft failures gave some warning

- In the case of the PA31 the previous pilot put 6 litres of oil in the engine in 10 hrs but did not think to tell anyone

- In the case of the PA39 the fuel selector did not feel right when I checked it on the pretake off checks, but I ignored it...shame on me

- In the case of the C-150 I always note where all the engine guages normally line up in any aircraft I fly. Shortly after take off I noticed that the oil pressure needle was 2 needle widths lower than normal. I immediately turned back to the airport and was on short final when all oil pressure was lost.... rather than over water if I had continued


One other point. The flying club I used to work for had a annual proficency check ride requirement. I always gave the pilots a no notice PFL. Over almost 5 years, I never had a PPL conduct a acceptable PFL and over half would IMO have survived only with great good fortune. Practice your PFL's

[Contacttower]

Just going back to PFLs themselves....

Sometimes if I'm not very close to the best field, I'll do a straight in approach...but a doing a circuit is always recommended.

Which do people think is more important...going for the best field or picking a worse one that is much closer so you can do a circuit around it?

[SNS3Guppy]

Despite previous posts all my light aircraft failures gave some warning

This is a good point. Aircraft and engines usually talk to you before they give up the ghost. Not only are most engine failures partial power failures, most of them are detectable early on in the process. Many complete failures are fuel exhaustion or fuel starvation (there's a difference) faults...most of the time entirely preventable. Fouled plugs that cause power loss are often the result of improperly adjusted mixtures, improperly maintained magnetos, or even spark plugs. Failure to adjust the idle mixture as a maintenance function leads to overly rich operation on the ground, and sometimes failures after takeoff.

I was assigned a Cherokee 180 to inspect, and found some binding in the flight controls. The group of owners flying it had merely accepted to problem without comment. When I inspected behind the instrument panel I found that the flgiht controls were binding on a wiring bundle and some of the instrument hoses; I was able with little effort to duplicate a condition that would have prevented use of the flight controls in flight. Something which gave plenty of warning, but would have proven fatal at some future date...the owners felt it, recognized the resistance, but elected to do nothing.

How many pilots, low on fuel, press on by overflying airports that have a nice long, hard, available runway with plenty of fuel...in favor of going just a little bit farther? More than a few. I checked out two pilots in a Cessna 210 with long range fuel tanks, and cautioned them both that filling the tanks to the bottom of the filler neck made the tanks look full, but left them one hour of fuel short on each side. Both pilots failed to heed that counsel and each ran out of fuel at a later date in a 210 with long range tanks...and made an off field landing.

During a spring training fire school put on by the government several years ago, I was returning from a field exercise in a PZL Dromader (single engine, low wing, tailwheel) equipped with a PT6A-45R engine. I was transiting a very large valley, and about ten miles from the airport I detected a faint smell of smoke. At the time I wondered how a fire in such a vast area with wind, would be concentrated enough to be detectable in the cockpit. I'm used to smelling smoke in the cockpit during large, active fires...but this was a simulated fire, and it was downwind. As I got closer to the airport, the smell got stronger. I did an overhead approach to the runway, and as I crossed over the numbers at a thousand feet, the cockpit began to fill with smoke. As I crossed the threshold during landing it was becoming hard to see and my eyes were burning. I vented the cockpit as I roled out, and breathed through an opening in one canopy door.

As I cleared the runway the cockpit became thick with smoke, and shortly thereafter the brakes (and as a consequence steering) failed. I had a fire on board, with a newly installed dual electrical hydraulic pump. A pressure switch which was supposed to cylce the pump on and off had failed, allowing the pump to run continuously, and the pump burned up...and caught fire. I was able to exit the airplane, remove a side panel which covered the pump, and put out the fire.

Had I been closely monitoring the electrical load, I'd have seen the pump running by a higher amperage output; it would have given me a clue...it would have been detectable. This wasn't an engine in this particular case, it was an onboard fire. However, I'd flown this airplane for several years previously, and it had used an engine driven hydraulic pump...no reason to monitor that ammeter that closely. The pump was a brand new installation, this was my first flight with the new system. This underscores several points, starting with knowing one's specific airplane, intimately. Another is one previously made; airplanes and systems talk to you. Sometimes that very little, nearly imperceptible voice, is all the warning you get. A third addresses the following quote:

Which do people think is more important...going for the best field or picking a worse one that is much closer so you can do a circuit around it?

You have only one priority; getting down safely. Flying a traffic pattern is a nice extra, but you don't often get to choose a real emergency; it chooses you. Consequently, you don't always get to choose the chance to fly a pattern, and you won't always have the altitude or opportunity to do it. In the latter case described above, had the situation become more developed and manifest itself earlier, I wouldn't have flown the overhead aproach, but would have entered straight in. Had it occured away from the airport, I'd have put it down on the high desert floor, or a road if one was available.

Don't give up a good landing site in favor of trying to fly a pattern. Flying a pattern sometimes makes landing a little easier, but the pattern isn't the thing. The safe landing is. Don't lose sight of the goal.

[Chuck Ellsworth]

Radial piston engines require proper handling techniques to prevent damage through miss handling.

Radial piston engines are not all alike in reliability...for instance take the P&W 1340 and compare them to the P&W 985 ( Both are relatively small Radials )

The 1340 is no where near as reliable as the 985.

I have never had a 985 quit on me in many thousands of hours flying them in the Stinson Reliant/ Stearman/ Beech 18 wheels and floats/ Anson mark 5/ and the Beaver.

[Dan Winterland]

Sounds like some of us can afford better cars than others! Personally, I've alway driven old second hand cars - and I've had plenty of engines stop on me! The best (worst!) was my Fiat Uno which suffered terribly from carb icing. Can't remember the number of times I had to stop at the side of the road to wait for the ice to melt. But of course, we can do something about carb icing in aero engines. Which is why we are largely comparing apples to oranges.

I've had fourteen engne failures in my career. They have ranged from spectacular detructions with flames and molten metal flying everywhere to a lack of throttle response. On twelve of these ocaisions, I've had another three engines still running, so they weren't much of an event. On the two single engined aircraft where I've had the failure, one was due to a damaged throttle linkage, the other a FADEC failure with an associated problem with the manual backup system. But both of these resulted in a sucessful forced landing (using the SLA method), but I'm trying to back up the point already made that there are plenty of ways for an engine to fail.

Which is why when I was instructing, when training people for an emergency, I rarely gave the student the standard fire or catestrophic failure. The failure which will get you is the inocuous progressive and 'gentle' failure which may not be noticed for a while, or will lead the natural optimist at the controls to believe that eventually everything will turn out OK. Rarely in life - and never when instructor induced, will this be the case!

[fernytickles]

The only radial I have spent any real time behind was the Huosai (Nanchang CJ6 engine). The Chinese may have an appalling Human Rights record, but they build a nice, reliable, strong engine. Not a single hiccup in the nearly 7 years I flew it. Top quality maintenance had a lot to do with that too.

That engine failure in the 146 was a no warning, catastrophic type. Fairly woke us up at the time. And it was interesting to reflect on how we handled it. Not just from the point of sticking to SOPs, but how we handled it personally. I was operating the radio, and I can tell you, at one point my vocal chords contracted so I sounded even squeakier than normal, making it quite hard to talk. Just a physical reaction, nothing that I could predict or, possibly, prevent. I didn't feel panicky inside, but I guess some part of me must have gone into "fight or flight" mode. Only lasted a split second, but could have been a problem if it hadn't passed.

We were both very concerned during the flight to our diversion. As there was no warning or hint of anything being wrong, there was always the very slim possibility that whatever had caused one engine to go from full power to nought with a very loud bang, all needles in the red arc, then to zero, could affect the other 3 engines. Not a comfortable feeling at all.

Of course, with hindsight, once we knew what had caused the failure, the likelihood of that happening was very small.

Going back to the physical reaction, thats something you really cannot predict. Therefore, having all the SOPs/PFLs procedures so they are second nature will help when things do go to the dogs. Second nature should take over, while the physical reaction is doing its own thing in the background.