MSB-E4-042 - Crankshaft-bearing cap screws replacement

[Boatguy]

Just an FYI -- New 12.9 bolts installed, and old ones below.

Can you tell who made the old bolts? Or the new ones?

[ingramleedy]

I couldn’t see anything on them.

My mechanic suspects or has a theory that the original bolts were over torqued incorrectly at the factory. Maybe that explains the odd pattern of group 1 and 2 as to who did it.

[Gordon]

Maybe. I have an extra set of bolts on an old core with 900 hours to run. My mechanic said they couldn’t be used since they had been torqued once already. So now still waiting for bolts which are finally enroute.

[nickname]

I wish Austro owners were due an explanation on the mishap for the cost and inconvenience caused.

[Boatguy]

I wish Austro owners were due an explanation on the mishap for the cost and inconvenience caused.

Agreed!

Austro/Wanfeng has turned a great engine into an unreliable source of recurring ADs. I don't know if it's incompetence or cost cutting, but the last three ADs, all of which resulted in catastrophic engine failure if not addressed, are since Austro/Wanfeng took over building the engine core. How is it the Mercedes version of this engine didn't have all these problems?

What pisses me off is that Diamond's management see this as: 280 engines, 8hrs each at $175/hr ≈ $400K or €370K in warranty payments they will make to DSCs and fleet operators. Sorry boss, but not that big a number. I'll do better next time.

Maybe 200 airplanes? How much did those 200 owners spend on insurance, interest, hangar rent, and ferry / shuttle time to/from DSCs while their planes are out of service? A hell of a lot more than $400K! And what do they get? Not a word from Diamond, or any of their distributors. Not a single word. When my Tesla needed a change in font for an alert, I got a letter in the mail and the NHTSA equivalent of an AD.

The distributors don't want to talk about it and dampen sales. Owners are afraid to talk about it for fear of reducing the resale value of their plane. DPA doesn't want to do anything that might upset the distributors or Diamond. There are no advocates for Diamond owners.

If my DSC had not notified me, I'd still be flying my plane around, apparently about to have a catastrophic engine failure (or two). I was called by one owner with a low time 62 who only learned of the MSB via DAN. His plane had never been serviced at a DSC. Nobody notified him of anything. He called me to verify what was happening and I had to tell him "don't fly your plane". Find another way to get home.

Diamond's total lack of interest in the customer experience would be shocking if it was not SOP at Diamond and what they have trained us to expect.

Diamond - the plane you love and the company you tolerate.

[ememic99]

Diamond - the plane you love and the company you tolerate.

Unfortunately and as you know, I’ve been telling this for years. Not because I have anything against DAI but because I want them to improve. It’s simply always same attitude, sometimes I have feeling that it’s even worse than it used to be. I’d be interested to hear how they are dealing with these issues with their fleet customers.

[krellis]

There have been several of us saying the same things for years. This attitude is cultural and was instilled by Christian Dries himself. Hoping for a big change from Diamond is a fools errand in my opinion.

And yet some of you continue to fork out $1.5 million on a DA62 and expect something dramatically different.

[ememic99]

This attitude is cultural and was instilled by Christian Dries himself.

It has been quite long since he has left and a lot of people changed in managing positions, so he can’t be blamed anymore. It’s the new owners who haven’t established appropriate corporate culture and they obviously couldn’t care less as long as order book is full.

[CFIDave]

How is it the Mercedes version of this engine didn't have all these problems?

Mercedes built hundreds of these engines per DAY in automated factories, whereas Austro hand-builds only a couple hundred engines per YEAR. I'm by no means a manufacturing expert, but it's obvious to me that Mercedes was able to utilize modern statistical quality control practices when producing its high-volume car engines, whereas Austro cannot do this as a small volume "boutique" producer.

When it started running out of Mercedes engine cores upon which to base new engines, Austro was forced to find manufacturers that could supply the individual engine parts for these engines in low volumes, based on individual parts specification "blueprints" that were more than a decade old. So it's not surprising that Austro has run into a "stack-up of tolerances" problem when re-created parts are assembled into a working engine. I would think that many of Mercedes' original parts producers are no longer in business, or weren't interested in re-creating parts last supplied to Mercedes before 2010 when the OM640 Mercedes engine was still in production. To make matters worse, as a producer of aviation engines, Austro can't change the design of these engine parts without a prohibitively expensive engine re-certification effort.

So Austro has been faced with a very difficult challenge in re-creating Mercedes engine cores "from scratch" -- a situation caused by Christian Dries' decision made a more than a decade earlier (the AE300 was certified in 2009) to base Austro aviation engines on an automotive engine that would no longer be in production. Current Austro Engine employees and management (most of whom probably weren't around 15 years ago) have had no choice but to live with that decision.

Having said all this, I agree that Diamond/Austro/Wanfeng should be doing a much better job of working directly with aircraft owners affected by these engine issues. Perhaps we're all just lucky that nobody has been killed by in-flight Austro engine failures. My pilot wife and I have been regularly flying a dry-leased DA40NG (included in Group 1 of MSB-E4-042) that's currently grounded.

[Boatguy]

I'm by no means a manufacturing expert, but it's obvious to me that Mercedes was able to utilize modern statistical quality control practices when producing its high-volume car engines, whereas Austro cannot do this as a small volume "boutique" producer.

280+ engines affected suggests this was not just the odd part getting through QA.

But if you are correct, that they cannot have reliable quality control because they are a "boutique" producer, then is there any path to a reliable Austro engine?