{"id":9562,"date":"2023-09-13T20:05:19","date_gmt":"2023-09-13T12:05:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/countryairstrips.com.au\/?p=9562"},"modified":"2023-09-13T20:09:53","modified_gmt":"2023-09-13T12:09:53","slug":"amazing-cessna-172-engine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/countryairstrips.com.au\/amazing-cessna-172-engine\/","title":{"rendered":"The Amazing Cessna 172 Engine – Runs at $20\/hour"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The amazing Cessna 172 engine that runs at $20 \/ hour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I learned to fly in the 1980s, the school\u2019s fleet was comprised of already decade-old Cessna 172s. Most of them clearly showed their age and the toll of countless training maneuvers, hard landings, and checkrides. The seats and interiors were already well-worn and faded, seat belts stained and produced odors of the many previous occupants. The plastic dashboards were cracked and re-glued multiple times. The original 1960s NAV\/COM radios were scratchy with often only one properly functioning. The multiple cowling screw heads stripped from a decade of inspections, oil changes, and engine overhauls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back then I paid $45 per hour, wet, for a 172. The CFI cost me another $15-$20\/hour depending if VFR or IFR training. There was no requirement to have your own renter\u2019s insurance (the FBO did offer a $3\/hr option that would limit max deductible to $500, but few took then up on the offer). My PPL cost me about $3,500 total, including checkride and even a shiny new Peltor folding headset. There were plenty of planes to rent at numerous small airports due to \u201ctrickle-down economics\u201d. Tax laws that made lease-backs make financial sense. Cessna was producing the same 172s at a rate of over 2,000 a year to pacify demand of FBOs, flight schools, flying clubs, as well as personal buyers\u2014who viewed the price tag of about $17,000 as feasible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Thirty<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/a>Thirty years later, the same airplanes are flying at flight schools all across the US.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over three decades later, my daughter expressed interest in learning to fly<\/a><\/strong>. I started calling around to flight schools to figure out where to begin. Although I had a GA background and built time as a CFI, I\u2019ve been flying for the airlines for three decades. I have been absent from the GA scene which I mistakenly assumed had long evolved and would now seem foreign to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After just a few calls, nothing had seemed to change except that the same 1970 vintage 172s were now renting out at $115-$125 per hour. Even more unbelievable was that the same engines were used and still required leaded gas\u2014the EPA and FAA seemed hell-bent on eliminating lead\u2019s poisonous emissions in the early 1980s. Somehow aviation became an inverted pricing model compared to all other industries, wherein the older and more worn a plane is, the more it cost to rent, and remained immune from any emissions rules that required all other engine industries to evolve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Quickly calculating aircraft rental cost alone for a 60-hour private pilot program in my head, it was obvious that there had to be another way. I looked into experimental kit planes<\/a><\/strong>, but I had neither the time nor facility to build it, and was uncomfortable buying a completed homebuilt with little way of knowing how or who put it together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I began looking into buying a certified plane, but quickly realized there wasn\u2019t all that much savings considering cost of ownership, let alone what I deemed to be ridiculous prices for 40-year-old aircraft in mostly original condition. What used to cost me $45\/hour to simply rent and walk away\u2014leaving the ownership cost to some owner who would write it off their tax return\u2014now would cost over $60\/hour just for the engine direct operating cost (fuel, oil, overhaul reserves). The engine cost was the real deal breaker, and there had to be some alternative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The only alternative engines I could find for the 172 were diesel engines that cost over $100,000 for the conversion, and offered little in operating cost savings. My background in marine engineering reminded me how the boat industry develops powerplants. Even the largest marine engine manufacturers use mass-produced automotive engines that they modify for the boat mission, an engineering process I was more than familiar with. This process, called marinization, allows the relatively small marine engine segment access to the newest technologies, state of the art quality control of some of the worlds most successful companies, and at a lower cost of goods then they could even dream of if vertically developing their own product.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wondered if the same process could work for aircraft engines, and began the experiment of designing and modifying a V8 aluminum marine engine to meet FAA Part 23 and 33 requirements, then install it onto a Cessna 172 airframe. (This wasn\u2019t an original concept, as I discovered. Toyota and Porsche actually certified modified versions of their car engines, but quickly closed the program for a number of practical reasons).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The