Light-Sport Aircraft Yahoo group Re: Can cruising the Rotax 912 a bit below 5000 RPM actually INCREASE wear?

Yes they are most likely right but I can't give you personal experience on this. I have not kept an engine for 2000 hours yet. 850 hours yes and ended up changing the sprag clutch at 800 hours and put a soft start on. Hard starting starts killing the sprag clutch.

Funny that the new Sparg clutch had double the thickness spring (the part that broke). So obviously Rotax somewhere along the way figured out, hey we better make this part more heavy duty because it is going out on people :).
Abid

--- In Sport_Aircraft@yahoogroups.com, "circicirci" <acensor@...> wrote:
>
> At http://flymall.org/aircraft/docs/FAQs-on-Rotax.pdf
> it says,or at least strongly implies, that cruising at less than 5500 RPM will wear the engine MORE.
>
> Although we do cruise climbs at 5000 to 5500 we often level cruise ours down in the 4300 to 4800 range when not in a hurry to get somewhere. We're both lightweight pilots and that's plenty of power to stay aloft in level flight at our loading. Uses less fuel, makes less noise, and figured for sure it would increase engine life.
> Despite their explaination on that site of why 5500 is optimal, it still seems suspicious and doubtful to me that 4600 RPM wouldn't be less wear.
>
> Anyone have, thoughts, knowledge, or experience on that?
>
> Yeah, I know the 912 shouldn't be ideled below 2000 RPM -- that's not the issue I'm concerned about.
>
> And I'm not talking about an engine that's running at below 5000 RPM because it's overloaded (for example if the prop pitch has been set too high.)
>
> Any ideas?
>
> Alex
>

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