Hey folks - my partner and I are about to send our Lycoming io360 engine off to Penn Yan for an overhaul later this month.
Of the premium engine shops Penn Yan was the most expensive, other than Victor, but with a fraction of the machining.
For my O-470R Quote were:
$25,800 Airmark
$27,300 Signature
$29,500 Zephyr
$36,200 Penn Yan
$39,950 Victor
Western is good too, but didn’t have their bid handy.
Penn Yan Performed the least amount of machining with an OK warranty. Victor performs 5x the machining for blue printing cylinders, balancing, non-destructive testing with a 5 year warranty and the only engine that bumps vRef up to the full price of the overhaul over the standard.
Zephyr blueprints the valve train, but wants and extra $1500 to
fully balance the rotating mass. Signature and Airmark full balance the rotating mass, but just install the cylinders out of the box.
Not trying to sell anyone on one shop verse another, but demand a full list of services performed. They are all pretty cagey about what you’re buying as the bid sheets are fairly scant with listed services.
Get the list of services performed by Western & Victor as a benchmark and send the shop
your List of services by email for them to respond. Pretty amazing how thee shops very. For example, they all say they “balance the crank and rods”. Rods are balanced for total weight are per Overhaul manual, but the better shops also balance for equal weight distribution big end to small end. There is balancing and then there is “balancing”.
Penn Yan performed the least amount of work, for nearly the highest price and so-so warranty.
Bottom line: Airmark Overhaul performed essentially the same overhaul services with similar warranties as Penn Yan for $10,600 less!
