Rotax 135 HP Engine

[bones]

Well I can tell everyone for a fact every, I mean every xenon (with the turbo 912, and yes they were the 80hp motor) brought into the country while I was doing it had a boost/ map gauge if the instrument had been changed it should/would have been with the same instrument as they were multi purpose.
i use to check the boost value on them as part of delivery.
as far as reliability I never had or heard of any motor troubles, I think the white machine in the nt had over 1200 hrs last time I heard.
servicing I would drop oil and filter every 50 hrs even on the standard 912 oil is cheap, see the colour of the oil after 50 hrs thanks to our shitty fuel.
Hope that clears a couple of things up

[Brian]

I have heard of a couple of the FI engines having problems &it really beats me why as we all know,FI has been around for a long time now &even my old suby 2.2FI never missed a beat. ....due to the FI & electronic ignition. Carbs have their place &it seems they most certainly suit the 912 plus so easy to maintain.Rotax would not admit fault no matter what & might possibly say operator used an engine not suited for this particular application.
I used to think 912 s were way overpriced but not anymore & in fact I'm sorry I didn't see the light 20 years ago !!! Comparing the suby powered to the Rotax powered is simply no contest.

[deandob]

Thanks Brian. I have been speaking to a couple of the gyro retailers and feedback about the 915 was to be careful as rotax had problems with the 912 FI that took a while to shake out, and it might be the same with the 915. I wonder if you had one of the new 915 engines and it cut out causing a serious crash and it was rotax fault - would rotax be liable (not that you want to test this hypothesis!)? I just can't get over the use of carbs in 2017 for new machines (especially for the price of these engines!

[Brian]

We have without any doubt a very impressive wealth of talent in the asra board &appointees. Allan, dr Paul , Mark R, can mix it with anyone at the highest level & then you have a incredible pool of talent backing them up who are all very talented &have a vast wealth of knowledge combined with experience.

[Brian]

Having had a suby 2.2 fuel injected engine that did about 4.000 hours & now a 912 Rotax for about 600 hours i feel i can comment on the subject. Fuel injection on the suby had been trouble free except for high pressure fuel pumps that can fail after 300 hours. They aren't cheap but they are readily available. The bing carbies on the 912 are nearly trouble free from the info i have so to me it comes down to 2 things, difference in price between carbs & FI 915 and the complexity between carbs & FI if anything goes wrong .
If I was building a new single seat gyro i would go carbs every day of the week however a 2 seater i would go the 915. In my new helicopter i would go the 915

[deandob]

One more rotax question...

With the new rotax fuel injected motors (912 IS & 915), wouldn't they be the choice for a new gyro? Aside from better fuel efficiency (which doesn't really help due to the extra costs of the fuel injected versions), the maintenance & most importantly the reliability of the motor should be improved? Although there is more complexity in a fuel injected system (mostly due to extra electronics), in the auto world fuel injection has been one of the reasons for improved motor reliability, so this should be the same for aircraft engines unless rotax stuff up the implementation.

An engine that is going to be more reliable (with less maintenance) is worth paying extra for if it saves even just one engine problem in flight over its lifetime. Or doesn't it work this way for aviation engines? I notice that rotax seems to have a lot of service bulletins for what is a rather old engine design, which isn't a good sign, but should mean over time the engines get more reliable / robust if you implement their service bulletins, or buy a new engine.

[RickE]

Your right deandob Allan has a wealth of knowledge in gyrocopters and aviation in general, We are very lucky to have him.

[deandob]

All good Ross. I have found this community very helpful, Allan in particular has gone out of his way to answer a barrage of questions from me. It is appreciated, I'm looking forward to starting my lessons and buying a gyro and hopefully contributing back once I'm more experienced.

[RossM]

Shyte, I should not have said that, scaring Dean off already.

[RossM]

I'm compiling a document with the aim to summarise gyro flight principles and I'll post it in another thread to check if I'm on the right path, and it may also help others starting to learn.

by all means
That is what the forum is for.
Nothing stopping you just at the forum, ASRA (board) is made up of volunteers, that are willing promote safe gyro operations, and tackle all the handbrakes on the behalf of its members.

[deandob]

Good to know, thanks Allan, I think it is safe to say that the Xenon engine is OK, lots of units been flying for a while with no significant problems reported.

Lots of good advice in this thread, and I have been soaking it all up as well as reading up about flight and gyro theory (found a very interesting thread on rotarywingforum about the pros and cons of high versus centre thrust line which delves into gyro theory & safety considerations). I'm compiling a document with the aim to summarise gyro flight principles and I'll post it in another thread to check if I'm on the right path, and it may also help others starting to learn.

[Waddles]

Had a visit from Vince Mack from WA today and he says that he has almost 500 hours on his 135 HP Rotax and had not had any problems at all. He said fuel burn was about 22 l/hr cruising at 4900 RPM. No boost or MAP gauge. Also said that these engines have the 80 HP core (black heads). The other Xenon I know a bit about is the one for sale in the ;last GN. Again, no problems that I know of.

Waddles.

[Brian]

Great advice on a couple of fronts & it's great to see the forum being used constructively. There's so much knowledge around but possibly not enough being shared.

[Brian]

Yes it's incredible to think that after 10 or so hours flying time in a day that you never got further than 30ks from point of departure & possibly clocked up around 7 to 800 ks distance flown!
I was a fw pilot before gyros & it did take a hour or two to get over the open frame thing but after that it didn't bother me .Great thing about learning in an open frame hand prop /hand start rotors is that you learnt all about rotor management & the wind on your face whilst doing practice forced landings was good experience when you did have an engine out.
Got to say though that the sleds are very safe to fly even if they feel like a mack truck to fly .

[RickE]

[QUOTE

Regarding open frame single gyros, I can't get over the raw experience of hanging out there in the breeze at 500 feet up and 60 knots.... [/QUOTE]

I have been lucky enough to fly around the country in both a side x side and tandem machines, but the one flight that sticks in my mind more than any other is flying around Kununurra in an open frame Rosco at 40 knots.