Engine wear - Local training vs long XC

Pedals2Paddles

Pedals2Paddles

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Pedals2Paddles
High time O-360, at or near TBO. Nothing blatantly wrong. Compression is all in the 70s. In annual. That's the baseline. What would be generally better:

Most of it's time spent doing local training. Lots of high power, low speed work. This to seems like maximum stress.

vs

Most of it's time spent on long cross country flights. Mostly at 65-70% power with good cooling. This to me seems less stressful.

Am I nuts?
 
You're nuts. Local flights aren't "more stressful." What typically shortens TBO for private owners who fly less, is that the engine flies less. It's quite common for regularly flown trainers to BLAST through TBO still going strong. Of course, that's just the engine. Everything else: tires, upholstery, etc... wears out alot faster with the "every 1.4 hours of flight time rental abuse."
 
Pedals2Paddles said:
High time O-360, at or near TBO. Nothing blatantly wrong. Compression is all in the 70s. In annual. That's the baseline. What would be generally better:

Most of it's time spent doing local training. Lots of high power, low speed work. This to seems like maximum stress.

vs

Most of it's time spent on long cross country flights. Mostly at 65-70% power with good cooling. This to me seems less stressful.

Am I nuts?
Click to expand...

What year was it last overhauled? I have a hunch its already passed that TBO, as is 75% of the other privately owned GA airplanes....


150/152/172/PA28 spend hours and hours in traffic patters doing touch & goes with students, do you constantly hear about engine failures?
 
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You're not nuts, but how often it flies is probably more important than what power settings are used as long as the engine is otherwise operated within the usual recommendations.
 
Oh man.

It's how the engine was managed, I've seen planes that don't fly much do great, planes that fly all the time do great, planes that just do touch and goes, do fine, cross country machines do fine.

And vise versa.



It's all how the engine was managed.

It's all how, and who flew the plane.

Don't play games thinking that XYZ flying is better than ABC, or there is some magic number of hours, or landings, etc. is going to tell you something.

Good prebuy/annual with a bore scope, compression test etc. will tell you 3/4s

Talk to the owner and have the owner take you up, how do you feel about how he flew the plane, how did he manage his climb, decent and cruise. That's your other 1/4
 
even if the seller sez it was flown by a lil old lady from Pasadena...:goofy:


either way....it's gonna end in depends. :D
 
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