Thought you guys may be interested in this.

I personally think CASA have just reason to maintain there restrictions on Jabiru engines. Jabiru have made a series of changes but while they have rectified some minor issues, it has made little difference at all. Camit the engine manufacturer who build the engines on Jabirus behalf under contract have been screaming for years they know where the problems lie but Jabiru blatantly will not let them make changes until recently where CASA have over ruled Jabiru and allowed Camit to remake the engine as the the Camit engine with the changes they felt it has always needed. thought Jabiru will not accept the engine as a certified Jabiru engine.

Jabirus stand is that there is nothing wrong with the engines and the fail rates (77 percent of engine failures in Australia) are all due to owner maintenance. not the engines. hence why they are not willing to make changes

Used to have an early solid lifter Jabiru 3300 on a little experimental we had. Little engine always ran great, very smooth, and never any sign of issue. I will say that in the aspect of maintenance they do have some differences from other engines, and temperature limitations lower than most, but this was never really an issue for us. I would be very interested to see what the actual cause of failure has been.

I fly a escapade with (an early I believe) 80 hp, 4 cyclinder, 4 stroke, not sure if lifters are hydraulic or solid...will have to look on it, never had an issue. but would like to know what to look out for??? I fly the plane occasionally for a widow who wants to keep it airworthy as her husband my friend is deceased. I always thought it was a pretty sweet engine.

DrifterDriver wrote:Jabirus stand is that there is nothing wrong with the engines and the fail rates (77 percent of engine failures in Australia) are all due to owner maintenance. not the engines. hence why they are not willing to make changes

That could very well be, hard to know without the engineering report on the failures. If something is not being clearly communicated to owners and mechanics via a maintenance spec or documentation, that's a big problem.

Rotax 2-strokes are a hell of a sweet engine, but in the hands of a bad mechanic they'll let you down just like anything. Information on how to maintain them is readily available though.

A year and a half ago I bought the "salvage" Avid Flyer airframe from Li'l John (the one here in SoCal) that had been damaged at HSF. He told me he had put 2000 hours on that Avid with a Rotax 582, and then he switched to the Jabiru and put another 2000+ hours on it. He bought back the salvage from the insurance company specifically to get his Jabiru engine back, and promptly mounted that same Jabiru onto another Avid (which the insurance bought him). As far as I know he is happily flying that same engine as we speak.

Pretty significant check mark in the "positive results" category for that engine. I have no idea what the real story is with this engine, other than rumors about some lubrication issues and oil temperature issues.