Good/Bad news item

Guest Discussion
1

In case some lurkers here are not on the AvWeb mailing list, it is very much worth checking out this story about the cause of a rash of recent catastrophic engine failures in Teledyne Continental engines:

http://www.avweb.com/newswire/news0016a.html#1

The 11 engines that failed when their crankshafts snapped include the one in N5841, the SR20 that a CFI (I believe) from Windy City Fliers brought to a safe dead-stick landing in a field. Interestingly and hearteningly, the 10 other planes with failed engines also managed to land safely. Apparently Continental figured out that a batch of bad steel, used for casting a specific run of crankshafts, made their structure brittle and prone to sudden total failure. Now they’re ordering a massive testing of all the shafts made in the suspect period.

The good news is that they figured out the cause. The bad news is what this might mean for widespread grounding of planes, naturally including the Cirri, until each of the crankshafts is tested. But given that there was a real problem to be found, the good news of its discovery certainly outweighs the bad. Jim Fallows

2

The good news is that they figured out the cause. The bad news is what this might mean for widespread grounding of planes, naturally including the Cirri,

Maybe not, or at least not most of them. The Service Bulletin put out by TCM lists affected engines and crankshaft serial numbers - only three IO-360-ES engines are listed! The engine serial numbers are 37114, 37115 and 37116. Since it’s reasonable to assume these were supplied to Cirrus around the same time (AFAIK the SR20 is the only plane that uses this engine model) then there are presumably three planes, including N5841, that are affected.

No doubt Cirrus will have some info on this soon (listening, guys? I know you’re there…)

3

Cirrus have confirmed that the TCM service bulletin will have virtually zero impact on the SR20 fleet.

N5841 already has a new engine, and the only other two aircraft that require testing are both owned by Cirrus Design. One of these has apparently already had an engine change.

So the net impact on customer-owned SR20s (other than N5841) is zero, and there will be no effect on deliveries.