It was a setup for serious agita and likely unnecessary expense. One day the big Continental in my friend’s Cirrus was purring like a kitten and the next it left him stranded five states from home base. If Juan had only planned for an unexpected overhaul. It’s more than putting money aside. He should have started with a logical checklist, thinking about what he expected from the first overhaul of this 1550-hour IO-550. He really didn’t think much about it at all, relying only on his shop to do the annual inspections and fix stuff as needed.
Herewith are some general thoughts to consider when planning your engine’s overhaul while you don’t have the pressure of making decisions right here, right now.
Have a Plan—and a Shop
Kick it off by thinking about what you want from the overhaul, like a factory remanufactured engine, a factory overhauled engine, a field overhaul, and a Repair station reman to new limits, plus any engine part and performance upgrades. A factory reman isn’t an overhaul because you end up with a zero-time engine built by the manufacturer to new standards (the crankshaft and crankcase can be reused), plus it can carry a new maintenance log without noting any previous history. Over the years, I’ve found that the average price delta between a high-quality field overhaul and a factory reman is on the order of 35% and slightly less with so-called boutique engines from RAM and Victor, as just two popular examples. Worth mentioning is that as of this past July, in addition to factory new and factory rebuilt engines, Continental offers on-the-shelf factory overhauled replacements for the most popular models. We’ll look at this in a dedicated report.
If you don’t have a good working relationship with a shop, now is the time to establish one. It could mean the difference between waiting weeks or more for a shop to even start the project and jumping right on it. And even if you think your engine is healthy (it was until that prop strike, anyway) talk with the shop about the plan of action when it’s time. Talk to others with similar engines and airframes. Get references and ideas from a couple of shops. This is obviously a lot easier when you aren’t forced to make an immediate decision in the hands of a shop you know nothing about. We’ve all heard about the long wait times at shops and the backorders for even common components. Yes, it’s best to put the airplane down when you’ve planned it for a while—not when you have months of planned trips.
Now is also the time to do some price planning and comparisons. As one example, if you are leaning toward a factory reman, what is the price premium (and warranty consideration) over a local shop doing a service limits overhaul? But it’s more than major engine components. Accessories should also be overhauled when the engine is overhauled, and that includes a prop strike. In some cases, this is also a chance to change mag brands (in many cases) if you have had problems with those you currently have. If you’ve been thinking about electronic ignition, now may be the time. If this is the case, is it an ElectroAir system or a drop-in SureFly. There are more options for experimental airplanes. You might also want to go with custom injectors or factory remanufactured fuel injection or a factory overhauled carb. The point is, there are lots of choices to make and these choices are best not made under the pressure to get the engine fixed, but which have been researched and considered ahead of time.
Understand the Warranty
The other thing that surprises me is buyers going into an engine overhaul not understanding what the warranty is. The way I see it, this is perhaps one of the first questions you’ll want to ask before committing to any major work. For a field overhaul, one year and 200 hours is typical (some shops might cover the engine for 500 hours) and that’s generous. But be careful of the stuff that can really sting. Another friend flew his airplane home after the engine overhaul steaming mad when he learned the new-to-him shop overhauled the Lycoming engine in his Cessna as it said it would, but in the process swapped his 2500-hour serviceable case with one that had upward of 9000 hours on it. He was offered no price discount or a good explanation. The way he sees it, this slick move decreased the value of his engine by half. Nearly 400 hours later, he’s pleased with the quality of the engine overhaul but remains unimpressed with the quality of the installation (he brought it back four times for installation problems) and the deceptive switching of the case.
Pieces and Parts Make Big Invoices
In the end, an engine overhaul can amount to one of the most expensive things you will ever buy for the plane, though flagship avionics installs often run a close second. Don’t make it more expensive by not planning for the event well ahead of time and look beyond the big job by considering the parts that will go into the overall. Unfortunately, you can’t count on all shops to go above and beyond to educate you on all your options if they have a parts room full of older serviceable parts. If you don’t have some ideas on prices, you will be scrambling to find out what is and is not a good price or what typically is included in the cost of the overhaul. New parts can substantially add to the bottom line.
As for which shops get high marks for field overhauls, we’ll sniff them out in our upcoming engine shop satisfaction survey and report back with our findings. Got one that’s done well or poorly for you? We want to hear about it.
Look at the bright side Larry. If a case hasn’t cracked in 9000 hours, its probably not gonna crack!
When it was time to overhaul the old, leaky O-300 in our 172, we decided to upgrade, since support for the O-300 was getting sketchy. You could no longer get some parts, and there was no factory reman. We opted for a Continental IO-370, via the Stoots STC, which gave us an additional 50 hp, fuel injection, and a constant speed prop. And since it is a current production engine parts and other support is still available, even if it is laid out like a Lycoming.
Art, let me guess that STC cost 2X what your airplane is worth? Sell the O300, those are great engines and Fresno Airparts stocks lots of NOS Continental parts for it.
It cost about what the airplane was worth, but also brought upgrades to the engine instruments. We listed the 0 300 on Barnstormers and sold it in less than 24 hours to someone who had fragged their engine.
Good article but do wish you had addressed downtime. I’m 500 or so hours beyond TBO. I wish there were a way to pre-invest in an engine today to avoid the seemingly inevitable months of downtime ahead.
Sure we addressed downtime—as we said, one way that might help is an established relationship with a shop, and perhaps by preordering components that have long lead times. There’s really no way to predict how long an engine will be down for an overhaul. It depends on a lot of factors including shop staffing, parts availability, the lead time on the schedule and even other jobs ahead of yours that take longer than anticipated.
You absolutely did. I should have written a better comment! Your focus was how to best handle the overhaul of an existing engine, which makes sense.
I’m wondering if there’s a way to secure the delivery of a factory rebuilt and avoid/reduce the delivery period and thus downtime. I wish there was a program whereby one could pre-pay some portion of the cost in advance to become a member of the “Gonna need an engine but really don’t know when club” and that would get you expedited delivery. It doesn’t exist, though I guess some manufacturers do offer the same AOG/expedited delivery for an additional 10-15% fee.
Years ago I bought a core engine and did a careful field overhaul as time and finances permitted. When the new engine was done, we swapped it for the run out engine in the airplane. Down time +/- month. After I was back in the air, I flipped the old engine to recover some of my overhaul costs. Less O/H cost and less down time.
In the past, I have bought factory remains to replace the engines in my Cessna 210s. In each case the downtime was about a week. One was with a one-man shop., the other with a shop that had about three mechanics, though only one worked on it, in both cases, Continental recalled the engines to replace something, the crankshaft in the first one, and half the cylinders and the other one. The crankshaft took a couple of weeks IIRC, but Continental threw in fresh pistons and cylinders for free, the engine that had to have cylinders replaced took about a day.
Establishing a clear and concise understanding of your priorities for the overhaul, their relative importance to you, and what remedial actions will be undertaken should any of these priorities be compromised is vital in choosing an overhauler. Itemize this list and hold them to an agreement before signing anything.
The list can be as simple or as complex as you feel necessary and may include items of this sort:
What can I expect for oil consumption?
Are there oil leaks that are considered “normal?”
Will I be given a list of new and overhauled parts?
Are all ADs and SBs complied with listed in the paperwork?
What overhaul standards are used in the work? New? Serviceable? A mix of these?
How is warranty to be administered?
You get the idea. It’s a lot of money. Understand what you’re buying.