1,800 Hr Inspection Costs

[michael.g.miller]

For comparison, here are some photos taken back in 2016 showing the head being replaced on one of my DA42's Austro engines; you'll see the core engine is the same as what's shown in the Russian OM640 video:

Would you mind sharing how much you paid to do a CH replacement (with the understanding that it would be from 2016)?

[CFIDave]

Because my DA42-VI N42DA (bought new in 2013) was only a year out of warranty in 2016, Austro was nice enough to cover the head replacement cost -- so I don't know how expensive it was. The right engine had developed an unstable RPM in cruise that (after the head was removed) was determined to have been caused by a leaky head gasket. This was back when all Austro engines were still using OM640 cores, so I suppose you could blame the head gasket failure on Mercedes?

At Diamond/Austro's direction, we had previously tried easier potential fixes such as swapping governors between left and right engines, replacement of fuel injectors, electric fuel pump filter replacement, etc. that hadn't fixed the unstable RPM problem. So head replacement was a "last resort" fix.

After the head replacement shown in the photos, the good news was that it fixed the right engine's unstable RPM problem. But the bad news was that the right engine unexpectedly produced 7% less power than the left, and it suffered from slow throttle response on takeoff. There were no ECU faults. I ultimately gave up and (carefully) flew the plane to the Diamond Canada factory in London to see if they could figure out what was going on with the engine.

About a month later I got a phone call from Diamond that they had destroyed my right engine! They had started swapping out parts on the engine to try and diagnose the low power and throttle response problem, including replacement of the fuel injectors (again). But apparently one of the techs working on the engine didn't torque down a fuel injector properly, so during a high-power ground run it launched itself out of the top of the engine!

At that point in early 2017 I negotiated for Diamond to purchase my DA42-VI back from me, and I paid the (big) difference in price to purchase their new 2017 gold DA62 demonstrator that was arriving from the Austrian factory in 3 months.

So that's how I ended up with a DA62, and how Diamond Canada ended up with N42DA that they repaired and used as their DA42-VI demo plane for multiple years. Before they sold it to a buyer in Australia, Diamond Canada took N42DA and changed its stripes and paint to use in Lift Academy marketing:

[MWC]

I was just (informally) quoted 60,000€ for a replacement Austro .

That's +100% mark-up in 36 months since the OP in this thread ...

[VickersPilot]

Including or excluding tax and labour?

[MWC]

Including or excluding tax and labour?

EXCLUDING ! ! !

[VickersPilot]

So €80k all in per side in Europe?