Draft Safety Proposal For Jabiru Owners in Oz

[rgmwa]

Originally Posted by az_gila

Perhaps the Rotax engines are getting older?

Unfortunately, the report doesn't differentiate between the 2-stroke and 4-stroke Rotax engines, which makes meaningful comparison with the Jabiru engines more difficult.

[Ignition]

New Update from CASA: They WILL be placing limitations on Jabiru Powered Aircraft.

However, in a strange turn of events, it is actually a very sensible approach that I would expect in New Zealand and not Australia, in that we will be allowed to accept the risk and take personal responsibility for our choice to fly in a Jabiru powered aircraft, knowing the risks, whilst having safety measures in place to both minimize the risk and assist Jabiru in improving the reliability of their products.

All I can say is I am impressed and believe CASA have made the right decision.

More here:
http://www.casa.gov.au/scripts/nc.dl...::pc=PC_102352

[KRviator]

No more flying Jabiru-powered aircraft from Archerfield. Morabbin. Jandakot. Bankstown. And presumably a couple of dozen more airports around the country.

For Sydney-siders it excludes Warnervale and presumably Wedderburn due to the trees on the departure end. Maybe even Camden but its years since I flew over there. Somersby is also out, so what does that leave?

Pretty onerous restrictions if you ask me and I foresee a swag of Jabiru for sale in the not too distant future.

Maybe I can get a cheap J430 and stick a Rotax 914 in it?

Tell you what though - I'm glad I didn't install a Jab 3300 in my -9!!

[TomVal]

I have been monitoring the Jabiru engine discussion group on Yahoo. Very interesting comments follow:

I totally agree with Greg.
Our Jabiru engine fleet of over 90 hyd. 2200's has accumulated more than 15,000 flight hours without any design issues. The issues we encountered, were attributed to maintenance problems. We have engines with more than 3,000 flight hours on them, still in good shape, still giving the same WOT RPM. We follow all instructions carefully to the letter, without cheating, as best as we possibly can. We never see brown oil residue in the rocker chamber, as evidenced in photos posted here, indicating overheating. Etc, etc. Aviation in general, ecpecially engines, are "Terribly unforgiving of any carelessness, incapacity or neglect". Despite that, many experimenters mess with an engine they don't fully understand to the last bit and washer, with dare consequences. I am fully confident that if installation and maintanance were carried out by a real professional, most of the issues and failures expressed here would not have existed. We never had any of the issues described in these posts.
Naftali Horowitz from ISRAEL.

[rv6ejguy]

Originally Posted by TomVal

I have been monitoring the Jabiru engine discussion group on Yahoo. Very interesting comments follow:

I totally agree with Greg.
Our Jabiru engine fleet of over 90 hyd. 2200's has accumulated more than 15,000 flight hours without any design issues. The issues we encountered, were attributed to maintenance problems. We have engines with more than 3,000 flight hours on them, still in good shape, still giving the same WOT RPM. We follow all instructions carefully to the letter, without cheating, as best as we possibly can. We never see brown oil residue in the rocker chamber, as evidenced in photos posted here, indicating overheating. Etc, etc. Aviation in general, ecpecially engines, are "Terribly unforgiving of any carelessness, incapacity or neglect". Despite that, many experimenters mess with an engine they don't fully understand to the last bit and washer, with dare consequences. I am fully confident that if installation and maintanance were carried out by a real professional, most of the issues and failures expressed here would not have existed. We never had any of the issues described in these posts.
Naftali Horowitz from ISRAEL.

Interestingly Naftali is a long time user of our EFI systems on these engines...

There is no doubt that improper maintenance and operation contributes to many problems on these engines. It's equally obvious that there were numerous missteps in the design and validation of some parts of these engines. The big difference to users is the reluctance of the manufacturer to admit to problems and offer a well thought out and tested fix in a timely fashion. Lycoming or Rotax issue a SB or AD and say here is the problem, affects these SNs and here is the fix. Done deal, move on.

Nobody likes problems but they are usually part of the real world. It's how they are taken care of which imparts confidence and respect in the marketplace. The route Jabiru chose to take did nothing to help their cause on either front.

[TomVal]

Originally Posted by rv6ejguy

...Nobody likes problems but they are usually part of the real world. It's how they are taken care of which imparts confidence and respect in the marketplace. The route Jabiru chose to take did nothing to help their cause on either front.

Being a small company, hopefully Jabiru will learn from this and perhaps become more proactive with their issues. If not, although it is an expensive alternative, at least Jabiru engine users have a bolt on replacement engine manufactured by CAMIT which is not affected by the CASA instrument.

Once the data collection is complete, it will be interesting to see what percentage of engine failures were due to poor maintenance or operating procedures versus design issues.

[rv6ejguy]

Originally Posted by TomVal

Being a small company, hopefully Jabiru will learn from this and perhaps become more proactive with their issues. If not, although it is an expensive alternative, at least Jabiru engine users have a bolt on replacement engine manufactured by CAMIT which is not affected by the CASA instrument.

Once the data collection is complete, it will be interesting to see what percentage of engine failures were due to poor maintenance or operating procedures versus design issues.

Agreed. It will be good to see the complete data after sifting causal factors.

[RV10inOz]

While CAMIT are not affected by the instrument, by sheer good luck that CASA probably did not realise they sold any "black-market" engines, they are the same product for the most part, and CAMIT produce the engine for Jabiru.

Ian Bent at CAMIT has some minor tweaks he thinks will help but thats about it.

Most of the bugs through doing extensive FEA have been designed out, but it will take time to see the results in the field as to whether they improve or not.

My concern is CASA have not mandated the improvements by means of AD, thus the fleet will have varying levels of improvement.

[Tony Spicer]

The story continues: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPyTIbuvLI8

A very informative 12 minutes!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPyT...youtu.be&t=473 cuts to the chase.

Tony

[Infidel]

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