Your choice of engine is the most expensive individual choice you can make
during the manufacture of your Europa. Several engines have come and gone
but no engine has proved its worth any better than the Rotax. Some of them
have proved totally unsuitable whilst others have added weight which reduces
payload (a valuable commodity). As Ivan said in the early days 'There is
more work developing a new engine installation than designing the airframe'.
So be sure that you make the right choice before you commit yourself. The
factory problems are not a good reason to change your choice of engine.
Whatever happens, I know first hand that there is very likely to be a Rotax
firewall forward package available. Whether it comes from inside or outside
the company time will tell.
For what it is worth my input on the engine choice is as follows:
Rotax
Well proven, good power to weight, good reliability, good fuel consumption,
expensive to buy
Subaru
Cheaper to buy, heavy (expect to waste about 60lb of payload), slightly more
difficult to handle with a monowheel setup (due to the pitch moment couple-
applicable to all heavy engines), slightly greater fuel consumption,
statistics tend to show a slightly poorer reliability
Jabiru
Cheaper to buy, some cooling aspects to address, direct drive and high prop
revs lead to inefficient power delivery, still quite early days to fully
assess as few flying in Europas
BMW
Much development work done by one builder in UK but torsional vibration
amongst other problems made it an unlikley contender (this builder now uses
a Rotax)
Wilksch Diesel
Lovely engine as a replacement for Lyco/Continentals but weight is still an
issue for the Europa installation, still only one flying in development, not
reccommended by manufacturer for trigear as weight is already critical in
monowheel installation
Other engines such as the Mid West Rotary, and an 0-200 have been tried and
found unsuitable.
Final observations
You only want to buy one engine no matter how expensive it is, changing your
mind later is time consuming and expensive
Rotax powered Europas fetch more secondhand.
The Europa is a great touring aircraft so maximising payload by keeping the
empty weight down is helpful.
Heavy engines require balancing - mounting the battery in the tail is not
ideal.
The cheaper options might save 10% on the whole project price but you might
not think it worth the saving later.
These are just a few personal observations picked up over the last 10 years.
I hope they are useful to those who have yet to commit themselves on engine
selection.
Nigel Charles
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