Ummm... Dumb question here from a big fan of small Continentals. How long do these engines last while turning those speeds? My expectation is that operation above rated RPM brings with it an extremely logarithmic service life derating curve. Guesstimate less than 50 hours at 4,000 RPM? Since I know nothing about air racing is it safe to assume the engine gets torn down after every trip to Reno? If so that makes racing a pretty expensive habit.
Hmmm, now let's see how much HP that is. WOW, that's a lot from 200 cubes!
Well everybody does things differently. We run a "race" engine for two to three seasons, but that only equates to about 15 hours on our speciality bird. (Race #3, Sly Dog). We also have a spare engine, which is pretty much stock, and kinda run-out, but would get us through the weekend if we had major problems with our Race motor.
Running a Race engine hard, and the cam/tappets pretty much are DONE at 25-50 hours from (at least thats what I hear from talking to other people.) This is all assuming that we don't blow something else up first. A guy somehow blew up a lifter body at PRS this year. I'm not sure how that works, i'm guessing corrosion inside it.
Some teams do an overhaul every year, some do a top every year, some don't mess with a good thing...
I'm guessing we are putting out around 130hp, we have a tricked out top end, fairly stock cam (limited, but some teams have more aggressive ones than ours), some carb work done (again, limited) mag timing bumped a bit, and some other stuff that is propriatary...
Yes, F1 air racing is expensive, but NOTHING comepared to T-6, Sport or Unlimited. To be competitive in sport you have to have a $500K buy-in now (NXT... or a Legacy with a MONSTER motor).
F1 can be done for a $15,000 Casset, and run in the bronze for fun. Put a $25,000 engine and some elbox grease on the airframe to clean it up, and you can be pulling yourself around the silver race. Or just buy a gold racer for around $65K and run from there. Learning curve is steep to buy straight into the gold.
I'd imagine the Biplane class is about the same costs, but more practical for day to day flying. But F1's go faster
But back to props.... who's gonna be running an elippse prop next year
?