I have owned my RV-10 with a 260 hp engine in it for 11 years now and it has been great. I have put 1,300 hours on it so I am no where close to TBO BUT I thought, wouldn't it be nice to have some more horse power for those high density days and flying out of the mountains. Not crazy horse power because more HP leads to more heat. I was thinking about a Lycoming with 300 hp. I know that they make them but the question is, will it fit? Has anyone put a 300 hp in their RV-10 and if so, what model was it. When talking to Lycoming, they said to go above 260 hp you would need a angle head engine that might be wider than the regular 260 hp and they wondered if it would fit in the same cowling. I am well aware of the heat issues and the VNE of 200 knots TRUE airspeed. I am not doing it for airspeed but as I said for mountain operations and high density days.
Van's Air Force
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300 HP Lycoming engine
- Thread starter DJP
- Start date
AeroEngineer
Active Member
Ralph Inkster
Well Known Member
Would be a real project to convert from a parallel valve 540 for the beefer angle valve 540 model. Maybe talk to the folks at Lycon to find out what could spruce up your existing 540's HP output.
On the wild side... maybe a squire of NO2 when you need it? Be cautious with this!
On the wild side... maybe a squire of NO2 when you need it? Be cautious with this!
Northernliving
Well Known Member
Paul Thomas
Well Known Member
Lycon can get you the power you want and it does fit. The only issue that I can remember was cooling; a scoop had to be added to the cowl.
rocketman1988
Well Known Member
300 hp
You can easily reach 300 hp with a parallel valve IO540.
I have a Barrett built IO540 with CAI and 9:1 compression and my dyno runs were a bit over 290.
To nip it in the bud, yeah I know about calibrating dynos and protocols for testing but I would tend to believe 290 from Barrett is pretty accurate.
Do some port polishing, flow matching, and even bump the compression a bit and you are at 300. No real need to try and shoe horn an angle valve in and have to deal with that nightmare.
You can easily reach 300 hp with a parallel valve IO540.
I have a Barrett built IO540 with CAI and 9:1 compression and my dyno runs were a bit over 290.
To nip it in the bud, yeah I know about calibrating dynos and protocols for testing but I would tend to believe 290 from Barrett is pretty accurate.
Do some port polishing, flow matching, and even bump the compression a bit and you are at 300. No real need to try and shoe horn an angle valve in and have to deal with that nightmare.
BillL
Well Known Member
That is a parallel valve engine, but the photo in the article shows the clearance to the side wall. Plumbing might be an issue but a cowling mod would be heavy lifting.
If an older angle valve 540 were available, and Barrett built with 390 barrels then it would be an IO582 and could use the available parts. (if the crank remained happy)
The angle valve heads have much better fin designs and could do the cooling.
This sounds like a fun project! A 260hp RV10 is already fast and doing this could get some speed, but dialed back a better fuel burn ( i.e.mpg). A sky dynamics intake and get. what, 320 hp? All without trickery. A tractor engine as DanH would say.
Sorry - I did not know that Lycoming already offers an IO540 at 315 hp. w/o SD manifold of course.
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