Hi,

Newbee here and am enjoying the wealth of info and help very much.

I am looking for a C-180 and have seen many with near runout engines. Some might be worthwhile knowing it will need a new engine. I have seen the piss poor quality of new TCM jugs personally in the past year and would never use them.

With ECI out of business is Superior is the next best alternative?

Has anyone had any experience with Superior jugs in the larger Continental engines approaching tbo?
Do they seem to last longer than the TCM jugs which for the most part never reached tbo?

Thanks for any advice or suggestions

Tom

My experience with cylinders on Continental engines both large & small is that the exhaust guides eventually end up needing replacement. They get worn, allowing the valve to rock around and leak which erodes the valve seat. My personal opinion is that there is something about the rocker arm / valve geometry that puts a side load on the valve, causing the guide wear. Probably the intake guide too, but maybe due to the heat the exhaust guide is always the problem. Don't know if there's a proactive solution-- roller rockers maybe?

I put ECI steel cylinders on my old C170 engine at overhaul time, they had the opposite problem. At about the time when normally you'd need to think about guide replacement, 800-900 hours, I suffered a couple stuck exhaust valves. Decided to ream them all (in place, using the rope trick) and 5 out of 6 were too tight.

I have TCM cylinders on my 1993 factory reman 470K, I just had to do an exhaust guide last spring at about 1250 SMOH. None of the others have ever been off, and they were all showing good compressions.

To answer your question, yes, I do have experience with superior cylinders on big Continentals.

Kenmore has operated a couple C180 on floats for many years and the last 8 years or so have been with Superior jugs, they've held up much better than the tcm jugs. The engines on these airplanes are the "Kenmore" O-520, basically a pponk with the higher compression Pistons from the injected 520 left on. Additionally these airplanes are pretty abused, long hot T/O runs at gross weight, operated off salt water and rarely warmed up properly, it's go go go in the 135 world.

With all that there have been no premature failures. Current thinking is to replace the cylinders with new ones every second runout.

I am currently building up a pponk for our C182 using new superior cylinders, they are beautifully made. After what continental did to ECI buying tcm jugs was never an option for us.

Thank you for the responses.
I guess there aren't any other options if you want to stay away from TCM jugs as I do.
We have a jump 182 at my grass field and it had a new Factory reman installed this summer.
The pilot is a good friend of mine and very experienced. Fortunately there was a 6 cyl Insight gauge on the plane. It was opbvious that 2 of the jugs had problems with high egt's and cht's. They were both pulled and one had an exhaust valve guide so crooked that the mech was surprised it ran at all. The other one had the intake manifold gasket installed so far off one intake bolt actually went completely through the gasket making an entirely new hole leading to severe leak thus the high egt.
The quality control at TCM is terrible. They gave the owner a very hard time with both jugs and refused to replace one of them.....unbelievable.

I love the way my big Continentals run when they're put together right. I despise their company culture. That said, I attended a seminar where a TCM rep presented. I learned that TCM recently, about two months before raiding ECI, switched to through hardened 4140 steel machined billet barrels. I told the guy I'd heard of that design before. It's called a SAP Millenium cylinder! They haven't bragged about this publicly, because I think they're a bit ashamed, and should be. In any event, if you can stomach their style, a Contenental cylinder now may be as good as they've ever been.

I have no experience near TBO, but have a new set of Milleniums on my T210. I'll be compression testing them this week after a year and 110 hours in service. I'll buy a new set for the 185 in the next year (or less)

Rebuilding a set of O-320 Millennium cylinders in the middle of nowhere....Platinum Ak. Came to a screeching halt when I discovered I don’t have the correct pilots for the Black and Decker stone tool holder. Pictured are Continental pilots and Goodson is out of stock on the exhaust pilots...posting up here hoping someone in the Anchorage, Palmer Wassilla area has a couple I can rent or buy. Top end of the pilot is 0.375”. Guide size/s are 0.404” and 0.4985”. Adjustable would be best.

FWIW. Not a continental, but I had a rocker boss literally break off of a cylinder on a lyclone IO360 engine about 7 years ago. Fortunately it occurred near an airport and the engine was running enough to get back on the ground safely. Never did figure out why it broke, but figured it was a bad casting. Superior had just gone out of business, so no chance of any warranty replacement.