HONDA vtec engine
 

I have heard several times that there has never been a failure of a Honda VTEC engine, despite building 20 million of them or so.

Do you think someone would be brave to put one of those engines in the SEP?

Gotta be worth a try, surely?

Just a thought..

Trouble is, when the VTEC kicks in, the rpm increases so rapidly, the prop will probably overspeed!

(Youngest son has a Type R Civic, it goes like stink).

Indeed, the Honda is a fantastic engine........in cars.
It's main asset is its' apparent schizophrenia, one minute a docile town car, the next it's screaming for the horizon leaving your eyeballs pinned to the back of your skull. Not the lind of predictable performance one wants when trying to pick up a couple of kts on late final!
(Apart from the fact that all propellor driven aircraft have dynamic limitations imposed on them by the fact that they have a propellor attached to them which doesn't like too many RPMs)

I think they are referring to the VTEC system, not the whole engine. It would be damn near impossible not to have an engine fail out of all those. Id question that claim too because at least 50% of engine problems the manufacturer/dealership will never hear about.

I dont know other peoples opinions but I don't like the idea of a piston engine in-front of me screaming at 8000rpm driving through a reduction gearbox.

Just a thought? Why are reduction gearboxes viewed with a little scepticism in the aviation environment, whereas automotive applications rarely experience failures? I would have thought most high mileage vehicle operators have recon lumps fitted long before the gear box goes U/S? Although the argument for auto engines not producing 75% power for long periods and not really being suited to these applications seems to be a valid stand point.
The problem with "car engines" in aviation is in the design. Short stroke car engines designed to deliver short bursts of high power low torque performance is diametrically opposed long stroke high torque (relatively per cc) low power aviation engines.
I would guess that gas turbines will feature in t5he future, just got to get those costs down!
PG.

Gas turbines use reduction gearboxes too, though.... ;)

It's not the reduction gearbox which worries me, its the small capacity automotive engine spinning at 5000-6000 rpm all day which worries me. Id take a big banger any day. Call me old fashioned but keeping things simple in my eyes is better in aviation. Its just a shame that fuel injection and electronic ignition has taken so long to get to certified engines. That lycoming ie2 thing looks interesting

Yes, but gas turbines don't go about hammering a transmission shaft tens of times a second.
You could say that gas turbines are from Venus, pistons from Mars ;)

I had an XR3i in the 1980s, and the gearbox shredded itself, gradually over about 30 miles, through the disintegration of a bearing around the tacho takeoff shaft, which took off the teeth one by one... by the time I got home, only the 4th gear was working.

Then I had a total loss of coolant in a Toyota Celica (suprisingly).

And two alternators go in another (imported) Toyota, to date.

Countless cracked aircon compressors in the Celica too - an experience reported by aircraft aircon system owners too.

I have flown about 1000 airborne hours, which is perhaps 1/2 of my total car / motorbike mileage, yet I have not had a single mechanical failure on the aircraft, whose engine sits there at 65% power all the time, and best part of 100% power for some minutes after each takeoff.

On the basis of the above admittedly small set of data points, I don't think I would swap my IO540 for any car engine.

I had an Integra with a B16A - engine was bullet proof, can't say the same for the clutch, gearbox, CV boots, air conditioning compressor, most of the electrics... :rolleyes:

You Need A Pobjoy
 

Seven cylinders about 115 lbs, 90 hp 3200 rpm and a reduction box that was built by Swiss Gnomes living in Hooton Park.
Swings a 7ft plus prop and gives plenty of THRUST.
Add an electronic ignition and away you go.

There's nothing wrong with reduction gear on piston engines indeed. The Pobjoy is just one example, and of course closest to what we need in small planes. But higher up the power scale, reduction was almost universal, from the RR Merlin to the Wright R3350, and even the slower Jumo diesels had them.

The VTEC engine has sucessfully been adapted for marine use. I sometimes drive a speedboat with a Honda outboard derived from the car engine. It's the best outboard I've ever used.

The reduction box is not really the problem. The OP was looking at putting a car engine in a plane, and to that end they are not really compatible. There will be exceptions, to prove the rule in most walks of life. I was at St Omer just before Christmas and a chap there has a Peugeot Diesel in a small Plane, I think it was a Jodel but not sure. But as a generalisation car engines are designed for a very different role.
Modern car engines use a lot of RPM to achieve the power output for the sales brochures, but most will only be turning at 3-4000 rpm at normal cruise speeds(70-90mph, don't you love those German autobahns?) Having just written that, it is interesting that the car and aircraft engine are designed to operate the majority of the time in roughly the same RPM range? I would have thought it has something to do with internal friction losses and heat build up?
Any how off on my bike to work now, which funnily enough is a Honda CBF600 with fuel injection and miles of wiring to all sorts of gadgets:ok: Most of which are designed to meet stringent emission regs and have sod all to do with power or longevity.
Nice memories IO540 of the Escort, the Mk3 was a legend in its day, not forgetting the RS Turbo, never really whent much faster though with the turbo bolted on :E Justn looked better in the rally colours.
Safe flying PG

Did you have an "XR3i girl" to go with the Car IO540 :D

Seriously though, engines these days have come on leaps and bounds over the old 1980's ones. I had the Sierra XR4i (without the girl) and it was brilliant...However, it did eventually die, just before going into the Dartford Tunnel with serious amounts of smoke and flames under the bonnet as the engine seized up! But saying that, it was almost 20 years old at the time and the only thing that I did differently was change the oil a few weeks before. Had I left the oil alone it would probably have been ok!

I think that there are numerous "partial" engine failure in aeroplanes, cracked cylinder heads etc., and you get far less of them in a modern, liquid cooled, car engine. The taxi driver I use to get to LHR drives his diesel Citroens up to 350,000 miles before changing the car and even with those miles on the clock, the thing still sounds as good as new and he rarely has any engine problems. At an average speed of 50 mph (which is quite high average) that equates to 7000 hours.

That 'Honda engines never fail' thing comes from Top Gear. A very reputable source indeed.

The B series engine is one of the best automotive engines ever made IMO.

As someone who is a keen track day enthusiast ( mainly drag racing) i've had several B series honda engines. My current is a B16A2 with lots of head work and a good re-mapped ECU. It makes power to about 88 -8900rpm ;) Never had any real problems with gearbox, drives, etc. I broke 1 driveshaft while drag racing on the local drag strip and that was the height of my problems.

How the engine would serve in an aviation application I don't know. Such a high revving engine may not be ideal for an aviation application.

I've got about 1,000 hours on single piston engined light aircraft and about 8,000 hours on small turbines, both singles and twins for the latter. I also have 40 years of riding experience on motorbikes, new and old, two and four stroke and the same amount of experience in cars, including some amateur motorsport.

I think it best to keep the big capacity, torquey engines in the sky and the more revvy engines on the ground. I wouldn't willingly swap back from my turbines for the airborne stuff though, even though I've had neither type fail on me in the air. Having said that, there is no twin piston engined aircraft that can do my required type of flying work, so there is no choice anyway. :)

I take it you mean the Honda? "B series" means something else to us of a certain vintage. AKA Leyland. That was still a good engine in it's day, though. :ok:

I had a Prelude 2.2i VTEC - the engine was absolutely superb. Very reliable and when you hit the VTEC zone, it was like lighting the afterburner. Then take it to the red line, shift up and the ratios were so cleverly chosen that you'd be at the start of the VTEC zone for the next gear....:ok:

But not really an aeroplane engine.

so thats a no no for the Vtech....thanks for the comments....:ok: