Piper announces CD-170 powered Seminole

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HPNAviator
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Piper announces CD-170 powered Seminole

Post by HPNAviator »

Serious competition for the DA-42 in the flight training market from Piper.
https://www.avweb.com/avwebflash/news/A ... 688-1.html
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Re: Piper announces CD-170 powered Seminole

Post by TimS »

No price or timing info though. Pure speculation on my part:
Archer vs Archer DX (the diesel version) is a 40K spread.
The base price of the Seminole is ~$650K with G1000nxi
If they maintain pricing, it could give the DA-42 a reall run for its money in terms of price/value at maybe a 200+K savings.

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Re: Piper announces CD-170 powered Seminole

Post by jb642DA »

"Standard" useful load is 1190# for Seminole. No O2, A/C or FIKI options available, etc. Even the Autopilot is an option in the "standard" configuration ...... tough to compare.

A "loaded" DA42VI has an approx 1080-1100# useful load (AP, GWX70 radar, AC, TKS, O2, extended range tanks......)

The diesel Seminole would make a good, hard core Multi trainer....
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Re: Piper announces CD-170 powered Seminole

Post by CFIDave »

The 2 most interesting things about this announcement not surprisingly apply to the engines:

1. Continental is willing to build a counter-rotating version of its diesel engine for the Seminole. This is something that would probably be difficult for Austro to match, since Austro re-uses the Mercedes OM640 car engine and it's kinda hard to make a Mercedes engine turn the "wrong way." I've never really been able to tell any difference in climb rate in a DA42 or DA62 by failing the "critical" engine vs. the other side, so having counter-rotating engines for a Seminole but not for a DA42 may only matter for marketing purposes.

2. This is the first application I've seen for a CD170 Continental diesel with 170 horsepower, presumably created by turning up the turbo boost of the previously-available CD155 engine. Because it matches the horsepower of the heavier Austro AE300, this might give Diamond more of an incentive to put the DA62's more powerful 180 hp Austro AE330 in new DA42-VI aircraft. On the other hand, the DA42-VI already performs well with AE300s, and will probably continue to out-perform a diesel Seminole due to the DA42's much slicker modern airframe and bigger wing.
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Re: Piper announces CD-170 powered Seminole

Post by TimS »

CFIDave wrote: 1. Continental is willing to build a counter-rotating version of its diesel engine for the Seminole. This is something that would probably be difficult for Austro to match, since Austro re-uses the Mercedes OM640 car engine and it's kinda hard to make a Mercedes engine turn the "wrong way." I've never really been able to tell any difference in climb rate in a DA42 or DA62 by failing the "critical" engine vs. the other side, so having counter-rotating engines for a Seminole but not for a DA42 may only matter for marketing purposes.
I am fairly positive both companies use the same OM640 engine. The difference is Continental removes not just everything attached to the block, but everything inside the block. Continental then dumps the block of puts the engine internals into a new cast aluminum engine block. From there the process is pretty much the same. Attach "aviation grade" accessories....

What will be interesting is when Benz stops selling the cast iron version and only sells the new aluminum version they started manufacturing recently the OM642 if I recall correctly. What will Continental and Austro do?

I sent a note to an acquaintance who works at Continental.
He said he cannot confirm or deny, but the engine spins the same direction but the prop does not.
Therefore I think it more likely the did the change via gear sets; likely less engineering, manufacturing and trouble shooting compared to reversing the engine. A reduction gearbox gives you an opportunity to rethink some assumptions.

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Re: Piper announces CD-170 powered Seminole

Post by CFIDave »

TimS wrote:He said he cannot confirm or deny, but the engine spins the same direction but the prop does not.
Good point about only the gearbox needing to be different to reverse the direction of the prop. That's much easier than building a core engine that turns the "wrong way" like Lycoming does for twin-engined aircraft.

Mercedes is already TWO generations of diesel engines (i.e., 2008 vintage OM651 and 2016 vintage OM654) past the OM640 introduced in 2004, so I doubt they're still building new OM640s. Therefore I hope that Austro has a nice stockpile of OM640s sitting in their back room available for conversion to AE300/AE330 aircraft engines. This applies to Continental if they're also relying on OM640 parts for new CD135/155/170 aircraft engines. On the other hand, with so many OM640 engines built for A-class and B-class Mercedes cars (more than a million between 2004-2008?), it should be easier to find Mercedes engine parts than parts for traditional Lycoming or Continental avgas engines.
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Re: Piper announces CD-170 powered Seminole

Post by farleymike »

Interesting that the CD-170 is not mentioned on Continental's website. This may be an engine that still needs to be proven that it works. Hope it does. If variant of CD-155, would be a nice option for older DA42's.

Hopefully not an issue like the Cessna 182 experiment with the diesel.

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Re: Piper announces CD-170 powered Seminole

Post by rdrobson »

CFIDave wrote:Mercedes is already TWO generations of diesel engines (i.e., 2008 vintage OM651 and 2016 vintage OM654) past the OM640 introduced in 2004, so I doubt they're still building new OM640s. Therefore I hope that Austro has a nice stockpile of OM640s sitting in their back room available for conversion to AE300/AE330 aircraft engines.
While attending the AVUSI trade show in Denver this week, I had the opportunity to speak to an Austro rep at their booth. He said they are almost out of their engines they have that were originally made by Mercedes but they have a license to continue to produce the required Mercedes block and related parts. They will be transitioning to these non-Mercedes built OM640s this year.
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Re: Piper announces CD-170 powered Seminole

Post by Colin »

He said he cannot confirm or deny, but the engine spins the same direction but the prop does not.
Thinking about this the other day on a long flight... Doesn't that mean that one of the engines has a different gearbox with more gears? Won't it be working harder (more fuel burn, more wear)?
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Re: Piper announces CD-170 powered Seminole

Post by TimS »

Colin wrote:
He said he cannot confirm or deny, but the engine spins the same direction but the prop does not.
Thinking about this the other day on a long flight... Doesn't that mean that one of the engines has a different gearbox with more gears? Won't it be working harder (more fuel burn, more wear)?
Going back to a couple of engineering classes almost thirty years ago (I am in IT, took a few engineering classes when thinking about going into engineering).
The work performed is the same.
The reverse of the prop, if only using gearing can be done by adding a gear, or position of a sprocket when doing a 90 degree turn in direction.
The real issue is actually torsional vibration.

Tim
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