A rough guess to a car would be hours X about 40 for miles, but there is not a real equivalent like that because the duty cycle is so different. Here is an example – Lycoming O-320 aircraft engines are rated for 2,000 hours. That probably is about 200,000-250,000 miles of flying. At a flight school where the planes are flying most days, they easily make it to 2,000 hours. Some operators who are not required to rebuild them (depends on the use)will get them past 3,000 hours and I once flew one at 4100 hours. OTOH personal airplanes that might fly 50-100 hours a year don’t always make it, just sitting and rusting is worse than flying. Boat diesels are similar, the apocryphal engines that last 10,000-20,000 hours are in something like a tugboat or water taxi that runs all day every day. Sitting for days and weeks and running briefly to get off a mooring is a terrible duty cycle for a diesel. Trawl through Yachtworld and probably at least 1/3 of the C&Cs listed from the 80s and 70s have new engines. If they really ran to 10-20K hours none of them would have a new engine. The other factor is salt water. Some diesels and probably more than half of the Atomic 4s out there are raw water cooled. They lose a bit of themselves every time they run and my rough guess for an Atomic 4 in salt water is about 2,000 hours or so before it has issues.
Joe Della Barba Coquina C&C 35 MK I www.dellabarba.com From: Bill Coleman [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, October 14, 2020 3:18 PM To: 'Stus-List' <[email protected]> Subject: [EXTERNAL] Stus-List Engine Hours Rick, you seem like a good person to ask this question, Is there a good way to estimate what the equivalent Hours, like say 2,500 engine hours on a boat, would translate to in Miles, (odometer reading) to guesstimate life span? Bill Coleman Entrada, Erie, PA
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