Right now, I've got to get my plane it's airworthiness inspection. But, If I were in need of a rotary engine and had a reasonable wish list, $7000-$9000 for an all aluminum short block P-port engine sounds like a reasonable price, especially if it had mounting provisions built in.   

Add in Tracy's EM3, EC3, and RD1-C, for about $5500. Then figure for another $2000-3000 to build an engine mount, exhaust, and intake manifold, injectors, alternator, etc.

 

If you were to go with the high end of all those figures, you'd have around $17500 on the high end, or $14,500 for the low end. That's do-able. Compare that with  the price for a rebuilt Lycoming.

 

My 93 13BREW installation  easily came in under $8,000. That's bacause I bought the J-spec engine for $850 with most of the accessories on it, including the turbo, power steering pump and alternator. I sold all the stuff I wasn't going to use on e-bay,including the turbo, the manifolds, for about $800. $500 went back into rebuilding the engine, which really didn't need it, but I had to be sure, and also because I wanted to disable the thermal pellet and add in the oil jets. Everything else I fabricated myself, which accounts for the excessive weight.

 

But back to the point. Trying to build a plug-in firewall forward package is a pretty daunting task. Tracy's approach was to make products to help builders do an engine conversion.

 

I think that powersport spent a lot of time and effort trying to build firewall forward packages in order to make a rotory solution as easy and attractive as purchasing a Lycoming, since a stumbling point for many builders is the task of fabricating everything firewall forward for a rotary. Instead of doing all that, I think a more successfull approach would have been to put the solely into producing a lightweight rotary engine with a much superior power to weight ratio than a stock 13B, and certainly the Lycoming. I think that that could have been done with an all-aluminum p-port with cast-in pick points for the dynofocal or straight engine mounts, a universal wrap-over intake with the option of forward or backward facing throttle plate, and a 2.85/1 redrive. And they wouldn't have necessarily have needed to offer a complete short block. The could have offered engine parts -aluminum housings, intake manifolds and redrives.  The existance of such an engine would have been attractive enough to make builders adapt it to their airplanes. I certainly would have looked at using it.

 

If I weren't trying to get my plane flying this summer, I'd probably be working on such an engine now. After the plane is flying and I've done the Jenny Craig program on it, I'll be looking to build such an engine. I just might have to wait until my oil well comes in, but you gotta have your goals.

 

 

I'm not knocking Powersport, I'd really like to have seen them be more sucessful. The earlier Powersport efforts were truly awesome. I'd love to see a lot more of their engines flying. I'd like to be able to take advantage of their advances.

 

Brian Trubee

-----Original Message-----
From: wrjjrs@aol.com
To: Rotary motors in aircraft <flyrotary@lancaironline.net>
Sent: Sat, Mar 27, 2010 8:10 pm
Subject: [FlyRotary] Re: Turbo Planning and p-port planning (Long)