Over the last thirty years of Lycoming saying that they have hardened valve seats, have any third-party tests ever been done to show that the seats are not hardened? I ask, because to me, it seems unlikely that Lyco valve seats are not hardened. That said, I know very little about metals other than gold is a gold color.
Small errata on your last post: it shows two quotes attributed to me, but only the second one is mine. The first one you quoted is from
@Jim K , not me.
As to the answer to your question, I don't know if they are sufficiently hardened (that's what she said...) or not, I was merely positing that people say a lot of things in life that aren't true. Parsing out intent wasn't the thrust of my post.
i suspect it's more getting used to the new normal rather than outright lying, they really haven't had a need to push the issue til now. btw, swift added something to their 100r brew specifically for recession.
See above. Parsing out intent wasn't the scope of my originally quoted post.
But it isn't "news" to find out a rent-seeker is not going to willingly enact capex or other changes, unless it benefits their bottom line. Lying, obfuscation, or even outright fraud/misrepresentation can and often are byproducts of that almighty "fiduciary" responsibility they have to their "shareholders", at the expense of the customer.
I'm not accussing Lycoming of criminal misrepresentation here, I'm merely stating that valve recession during the transition to unleaded fuels in preexisting unhardened hardware was a thing in automotive, and rather old news. The friction here (pun very much intended) comes because of the overpriced nature to these engines, and the teeth gnashing by some incumbent end users who are going to get a fox-2 up the pipe with modification costs, or those who consider it a moral injury to incur any additional cost.
Valve seat retrofit isn't a moonshot. This whole thing is overblown.
"In 1989, the FAA commissioned a [...] of Lycoming O-320 engines running on test stands[......]
..We're so cooked, chat.
As to the rest of your post, excellent summation. The timing in the angled IO360 at 8.7 is backed out to 20* to maintain det limits even with 100LL. At any rate, I bet a carbed parallel 360 at 8.5CR won't lose much at 22* over 25*, 20* prob wouldn't even be needed. So I agree with Busch's assertion on that front. It's more than reasonable. But of course, you can't pitch that to people who overpaid for a tractor engine from 1964, it's "insult to injury" territory.
In any event, is re-seating those jugs really that much of a moonshot? I'm being rhetorical of course. But Lycoming rather get these stupid things to the junkyard than keep extending the life of them by retrofitting them, let alone shoulder (R/D or otherwise)
any of the cost of doing so. They're truly stuck in a dilemma: They overcharged for and were complicit in the regulatory preservation of the status quo for decades, now their customer base can't afford to treat them as the non-historic-value relics they are, in order to "go away quietly" like Textron would like them to. Couldn't have happened to nicer guys.
