What's new
Van's Air Force

Don't miss anything! Register now for full access to the definitive RV support community.

Engine failure stories?

S

SwimmingDragonfly96

Well Known Member
I’m always curious about the integrity of what’s up front. I’ve probably driven close to a half a million miles and never experienced engine failure in a car. However, it seems most pilots experience some kind of engine failure eventually. Have you experienced engine failure? What was the condition of the motor? Has anyone experienced catastrophic engine failure involving a well-kept and healthy seeming lycoming motor (borescope, compression, oil burn, oil analysis, etc)?
 
I have around 3,000 hours behind piston singles and quite a bit of time in piston twins and have never had anything worse than carb ice.
 
Like Terry, I have north of 3000 hours in piston engine airplanes. However, I’ve had 4 engine failures in that time. Once in a Beech 18 (P&W R-985), and three times in DC-3’s (P&W R1830). But I have never had an engine failure in a flat Lycoming or Continental powered airplane. I think they are pretty reliable if you take care of them and fly them often.
 
Engine failure

10,000 plus hours in piston aircraft. One in a DC-3, 1830, one in a c-65, J-3, broken rocker arm on downwind. That’s it.
 
Engine Failures?

In over 4000 hours in piston singles (and a few hundred in a twin), the closest to an engine failure has been a broken exhaust valve in a 200hp Piper Arrow, but it would still run just down on power. All were Lycomings except a Champ with an 85 Continental. Any issues with engine stoppage is almost always some other issue like fuel, alternator failure, carb ice, etc.
Ed
 
Somewhere around 5,000 hours of piston time.
Threw a connecting rod in a TR-182 at 700’ after a T&G.
Another (not me but based with us, 2 serial numbers apart) spun a main bearing and seized about a month later. That was still on the ramp prior to a night departure.
 
Close on a work flight. Plane was 24k alt a little over 20 miles from the field and 2 oil line separated from my engine. I established an engine out glide profile and set my torque to the setting we use when we practice them so that all I would need to do if the engine quit was feather my prop and continue my approach. Honestly, we practice engine outs so much it was basically uneventful.
 
For us old guys, it’s probably important to understand when (in time) failures have occurred, because engines have improved over the decades. When I was a young student pilot over fifty years ago, every pilot in the FBO had put a light plane down in a corn field due to throwing a rod, sucking a valve - something internal to the motor. As a result, engine-out practice was serious and always talked about. Fast forward to today, when actual engine failures are much less common - and when the fan does stop, it’s usually due to loss of fuel, spark, air - not a broken rod.

Why the difference? My hypothesis is that in addition to improvements in metallurgy (your Lycoming is definitely NOT your grandfather’s Lycoming), we know a lot more about what’s going on in our motors because we have four-cylinder CHT’s and EGT’s - and manage the engine more appropriately than in the old days, when we didn’t know any better.

In more than fifty years of flying, I probably have close to 6,000 hours in piston singles, and have had one engine-out landing - due to a stuck fuel valve in the airframe that starved the engine for gas - nothing to do with the engine itself.

I still think about engine outs, and where I’m going to put the plane if it quits - but not as obsessively as in the old days - except of course, when I’m over rugged, un-landable terrain! (Or, of course, when I’m training up for a flight test program.)

Paul
 
I've had two in my 4,500 hrs or so (99% light piston bug smashers). Both in apparently healthy engines with no warning. One resulted limping home with an engine full of metal (unknowlingly). Idler gear shaft came loose from the crankcase rear section. The second was an intake valve failure (over a 300 ocst ceiling). Didn't realize beforehand, but a single intake valve failure affects the entire induction system, resulting in losing most available power and bad temp excursions.
 
Last edited:
Third times the charm

I’ve had two failures resulting in off field landings in piston engine planes over my 55 years in the cockpit. One in a Chipmunk due to improper maintenance. A locknut on an exhaust valve backed off preventing the valve from opening. And one in my 8 by the engine manufacturer leaving fod in the engine that got lodged in the teeth in the accessory case, taking out the cam gears rendering the engine useless.
Had another engine that was tearing itself up due to lifter chewing up a cam and making massive amounts of metal that didn’t play well with the bearings, but we caught that before it quit.
Like Paul, mine both have been poor maintenance and not outright parts breaking for no reason. The lifters were a known problem from a certain batch.
I’m hoping that’s my 3..
Never think it can’t happen to you and always be ready for it.
 
Last edited:
Fuel pump gone bad

Practicing maneuvers in my RV6 with O360A1A with 800 hours at 2000’ AGL over dirt runways SE of Denver. Engine sputtered and started to quit. I felt comfortable with doing a steep spiral/glide to land if necessary, and configured for best glide speed. Then, I added full throttle and full rich mixture, noticing a brief improvement, but then the engine began failing again, the propellor slowing down. Considering the humidity and temperature that day (there was an overcast ceiling above), I added carb heat, but there was no improvement. I turned on the boost pump, and the engine came back strong. This entire sequence took about 30 seconds but felt like much longer. I circled the runway a few times for good measure, flew home (over farm dirt strips along the way), changed fuel pump the following week, and have experienced no problems like this since.

On flights just prior to the incident, I noticed sputtering on two occasions which I remedied by enriching the mixture. Once, this was crossing Rockies at 12500 AGL en route to Leadville. Since I usually lean periodically as I climb, I figured I had over leaned the mixture. I didn’t think that the problem was the fuel pump, but I learned otherwise and confirmed it after running some fuel pressure tests (per advice from Lycoming tech support) back at the hangar. I wonder what other clues that I may have missed to predict/prevent this problem?

I enjoyed reviewing the incident with the builder (my father) and on reflection, learned a great deal and built up some confidence in the airplane, my judgement, and troubleshooting abilities under stress.

Bryan Ferrer
RV6 N2GX
Built in 2002 by my father Gabe Ferrer in Port St Lucie FL
 
I had one as a student in a 152 the flight before my solo. The prop seal blew out on take off and oil covered the windshield. Oil also hit the exhaust and caused a decent amount of smoke. My instructor made me solve the problem, declare an emergency, and land on a crossing runway.
 
I've had two stoppages - one for electrical (resolved in flight) and one for fuel (landed with partial power) - but nothing mechanical. 2700 hours.
 
I've had two adrenaline-filled events over the years. The first was behind an O-200 in a Bolkow 208C - when applying throttle to climb back up to altitude over the ocean the engine gave me 2000 RPM and nothing more. It was insufficient to climb and barely enough to maintain altitude. When back over land I used the wind to essentially ridge soar to the nearest airport. I found a problem with the throttle cable..

The second in an RV-6 was again after crossing water for 40 minutes. Heard a funny noise halfway across the Cook Straight. Came and went - I laughed at the ridulous notion that you can always hear every ignition cycle of an engine when flying over water and put it behind me. Less than 5 minutes after making land the engine ran horribly rough, developed no power and was vibrating badly. A successful outlanding was completed (bloody lucky!) and I found a broken exhaust rocker arm. TSO - 60 hours. Turns out the overhaul shop had installed an incorrect valve guide. The stem was too long which loaded up the Rocker Arm each time it compressed the springs.

To put it all in context, I had more engine problems in my cars as a lad than I feel I've had in aeroplanes. I had to do a lot of walking in my younger years. Pulled the head of my POS Ford Cortina motor 7 times before I got rid of it. Running it on a combination of white spirits and Avgas probably didn't help... but I was broke. Broke because I was forever fixing the motor. :D
 
Last edited:
Good Karma

Lots of Beech 18 stories led me to tell about a friend in a Beech 18 flying the mail in the 70's.
Hamilton NY at the time was lighted but closed to night traffic. Weather was low IFR. No instrument approaches in that era.
Jack was probably 50 miles from Hamilton and had a total engine failure. Prop feathered but airplane was descending with full power on operating engine. Recommendations from Boston center were rejected for various reasons and Hamilton was decided on. As the Beech got very close to Hamilton Jack still did not know if there would be runway lights. The Beech came out of the clouds VERY low and the runway lights came on. The Boston Center radar vector had put the airplane perfectly in line with the runway. Boston Center had reached the airport manager who lived nearby. He drove to the airport and turned on the lights at the last possible second.
I don't think Jack ever flew again. he died of cancer at a much too young age.
 
planenutz said:
... Running it on a combination of white spirits and Avgas probably didn't help... but I was broke. Broke because I was forever fixing the motor. :D
Click to expand...
... and the motor kept quitting because you were running strange fuel... :)

Like Paul, I also remember the "bad old days" when flight training was all about engine failures - they seemed to be far more frequent - or at least that was everyone's perception.

I never had one, but where I started flying around Austin none of my flight instructors wanted to go west of I-35 since that's where the evil hills are, and landing there with a dead engine was tougher than on the much flatter east side of the highway. I probably had more training approaches to road and field landings than to a proper runway. Based on the emphasis put on engine out landings, I assumed that it was going to be normal that I end up with a dead engine regularly. Thankfully it hasn't turned out that way.
 
At The Mercy Of Mechanics!

I had a maintenance-induced engine failure. Attached is the story (with pics) of my successful off-field landing on the beach on Jetty Island in an FBO's C-172. Loss of oil pressure and subsequent engine failure due to a mechanics’s mistake in complying with an AD and Lycoming SB No. 505B.


This is the note from the SB that the mechanic missed in Section II:

"h. After inspection, clean residual penetrants and developers from the crankshaft bore. Remove the lint-free cloth from the crankshaft bore prior to installing front crankshaft plug. Failure to do so may result in oil restriction within the engine and in turn cause engine failure."​


Here is the SB:



BTW, that C-172 is still flying with the FBO today and I see it quite often on ADS-B IN.

On another occasion, I was towing sailplanes with a 235 HP Pawnee. Shortly after breaking ground on one tow, the engine suffered a large power loss accompanied by significant vibration (turned out to be a stuck valve). I continued the climb to about 300' AGL, an altitude from which I knew the sailplane could make a successful 180 for the conditions that existed that day, and waved off the sailplane. The sailplane made a 180 and landed back on the runway we took off from (an emergency procedure we practice for in sailplanes). I nursed the Pawnee around to another close runway and landed safely. At the time, as I was turning toward the other runway to land, I remember thinking how I liked that big, fat wing on the Pawnee!

On two different occasions with a Super Cub, the throttle's Bowden cable slipped after takeoff such that I could not increase or decrease power. Luckily the throttle was stuck at a power setting that allowed level flight. I ended up both times landing by modulating the mixture control to reduce power. Quite easy to do.

~7,000 hours in SEL airplanes and sailplanes.

(And remember, never trade luck for skill! :D )
 
Last edited:
Slightly over 6000hrs, and one engine was (imminently) quitting. It was a turbine twin, but the problem was a broken oil cooler fitting dumping out all the engine oil. The oil cooler doesn't care what kind of engine it's attached to. When it's broken, it's broken. Fortunately, I had a spare PW120 on the other wing that brought us safely to a runway.

The OP mentions automotive engines too. I've had 2 truck engines let me down. One was a catastrophic connecting rod failure. Took out a chunk of the block and everything. Later on, the next engine in the same truck had the crank position sensor quit. The ignition had no idea where the crankshaft was, so couldn't do it's job. Not so much an issue with airplane engines with 2 ignition though.

Speaking of ignitions, I've had plenty of single magneto failures. Didn't notice until doing a mag check.
 
RV6 eng failure

11 yrs ago my Lyc O360 came from the all together. 6,000’ at night vfr the oil line to the cooler backed off and motor blew a hole in the case due to starvation. Was 5 miles from an airport and landed ok but still on fire around the cowl and firewall did it’s job. Smoke in the cockpit was my worry but opened fresh air and all good. First total engine fail in a single engine after 17,000 hrs. Fly higher at night saved my bacon. Check your insurance policy, mine did not cover the part that failed. AKA motor. Thanks Global.
 
I have had several partial power losses. Almost all were due to valve train issues, the rest due to induction ice. The only total failure was in a jet engine that lost its HP fuel pump.

It seems that many folks fear a catastrophic failure, my advice is to do a valve wobble test every 500 hours and save a fair amount of potential issues.

As a glider CFI I am still a big fan of practicing power off landings, I like 1000’ overhead your touchdown point with a 360.
 
Lost power on aTIO-540 in a Navajo Chieftan due to maintenance mistakenly putting chrome rings in a chrome cylinder. I made it to 4000' before the piston burned through. BOOM! Oil coming out of every hole in the cowling. Feathered it and shot an ILS back in for landing. Only true engine failure in over 16000 hours of flying of which 4600 were general aviation and it was self-inflicted IMO by a maintenance mistake.
 
Last edited:
Engine failure.....

I've had two: one early in my flying career from fuel starvation less than a mile from the airport. Landed on a dirt country road and walked to the airport to get a gas can!:rolleyes: The second few were in the Cub from a stuck exhaust valve that became unstuck just as I was setting up to land! I routinely practice engine-out procedures to keep the muscle memory and routine just that: routine. I was impressed with watching myself run through the routine in an actual emergency. The cylinder has since been replaced and no problems since.

I witnessed an engine out once. I was in the Cub and a friend was in his C-170 and we were headed for a fly-in 30 minutes away. I departed first and, as he passed me, I noticed he was streaming smoke or oil or something and radioed him. Yeah, it's starting to run kind of rough. He turned around and returned to the airport. As I flew over him stopped on the runway, I could see a stream of oil down the right side of the airplane! Turns out a piston had disintegrated and the now-free rod punched a fist-size hole in the case. :eek::eek::eek: We had been overflying downtown Denver the night before and 20 minutes of flight time before that happened. :eek::eek::eek:

He did figure out what happened: it was a standard piston in a 10 over cylinder. It has been rattling around in there for over 300 hours before it let loose! :eek: He made a lamp out of one of the cylinders and gave it to me. It sits on an end table in the Airplane Room! Just a subtle reminder: PAY ATTENTION!!
 
Restoration First flight RV-1 Mockingbird

First flight after restoration of RV-1 Mockingbird over 25 years ago a Yolo County Airport. Took off, turned to the left climbed to 2000' and orbited the field. Minor squawks but nothing major. After a time, decided to orbit to the right. Engine quits. OK, declare emergency at the non-towered airport that happened to have a small Young Eagles event going on. Everyone was nice and gave me the pattern. Engine came back on downwind, decided to keep with the plan. My sailplane training from high school kicked in. Landed, taxied off no problem.

Turns out a stupid extra piece of vent tubing I removed from the gas tank REALLY was needed after all. Fuel fed fine while level or turned left. Right turn blocked off the header tank vent. Fed until the created vacuum balanced the tank head pressure. Re-installed the tubing. No problems after.
Go figure.
 
I've had two partial engine failures in 10,000 hours. One was a blocked fuel filter in my Pitts S-2B. Returned safely and landed at John Wayne Airport. Not being a mechanic, I assumed that the shop maintaining the plane knew enough to clean out that filter at the annual inspection, but apparently it had not been done in a long time.

The second was a C172RG Cutlass that had a cylinder fail in the middle of the Santa Ana Canyon while performing a lost-and-diversion exercise with a commercial student. The vibration was bad enough that I shut the engine down and we glided to Corona Airport. The RG was a flight school airplane that was rode hard and put away wet. Plus it lived outside in the coastal salt air environment for decades, so you can imagine it was more than a little rough.

--Ron
 
Tomorrow will be the 11th anniversary of my first engine failure of a Lycoming O-235 in a Kelly-D biplane. We never learned the true cause of the accident, but the final report suggested carb ice. I was getting checked out and flying from the rear seat, since we had just purchased the aircraft and the instructor had just flown it from California to Mississippi. Thankfully, he took over and flew the plane all the way until the impact with pine trees, so we both survived.

A few years later, while flying a Cessna 182Q, the flame cone fell out of the muffler and got caught, causing severely reduced power. I was able to fly to a safe landing at an airport several miles away from where I first noticed the problem.

I do have the shattered propeller from the Kelly D and the exhaust manifolds from the 182 hanging on my hangar wall to remind me to always be vigilant when flying.
 
Engine Failures

The six cylinder turbocharged engines bring their own set of problems. Exhaust or intake issues can cause the boost to be all or partially lost. Exhaust failure on a turbo twin Cessna involves a whole different level of issues.
I had avoided major problems with those engines for years. A few years ago. 100 out of Vegas at night in a Cessna 402C, a very loud bang and the left engine was not making power. Feathered the prop and I was amazed that the airplane flew quite well on 75% power. Long story short I made my planned destination of North Vegas. Tower was closed and I taxied to parking on one engine. Left front cylinder tried to depart the airplane but only got as far as turning the cowl door into a big scoop. The piston was in small pieces and one connecting rod bolt was gone. Sequence of events never determined.
Engine was from a shop that is not highly regarded. Shade Tree Intergalactic Airways. I resigned the next day after learning the prop on the good engine was about to fail.
 
Anecdotes

it seems most pilots experience some kind of engine failure eventually
Click to expand...
Talking to any group of pilots, you'll get those stories and not the ones where people flew 10,000 hours without incident.

To cite data, past Nall reports indicate that the rate of GA fixed-wing accidents caused by mechanical failure is 0.82 per 100,000 flight hours. You can dig into those numbers to find which (even smaller) percentage is engine related, but in any case that gives a pretty good indication of how likely any one of us is likely to ever experience an engine failure (i.e. not very).

A (unscientific) Poll might be fun to see in any case.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top