DA40NG N314KY Engine Failure

[alanhawse]

Today my wife who was flying our DA40NG had an engine failure. She managed to get the airplane on the ground. The power gradually went bye-bye over about 10 minutes... and she had no thrust by downwind of the airport that she nrst->d->enter-entered. She completed a po-180... yes she is a bad-ass

I was following her in our DA50 (on a flight to our maintenance center). Not that how I feel matters... but it sucks watching your wife fly a dying plane.

The plane barfed out all of the oil. Our DSC/AP/IA has now looked at the plane.. it appears that at least one piston failed.

The plane had about 850 flight hours... and we were going to replace the engine as part of the AD.

I would say to not jump to too many wild conclusions... hopefully Diamond will actually communicate with me or at least the DSC. I am assuming that Diamond will act with integrity and give us all the real story.

We have been talking about the take-aways from the emergency. It is still really soon... but if I were flying in a Austro engine airplane I would treat any loss of power as an immediate emergency.

Alan

[Boatguy]

How many hours since the last inspection?

[alanhawse]

How many hours since the last inspection?

The annual was in March. About 30 flight hours ago. All the metal inspections were about 2-3ppm

We fly the plane about 400 hours a year.. so it has been inspected very frequently

Alan

[Boatguy]

How many hours since the last inspection?

The annual was in March. About 30 flight hours ago. All the metal inspections were about 2-3ppm

We fly the plane about 400 hours a year.. so it has been inspected very frequently

Which AD(s) applied to the engine? Was it 30hrs since a borescope for MSB-043, or just the metal in the oil check?

[alanhawse]

Which AD(s) applied to the engine? Was it 30hrs since a borescope for MSB-043, or just the metal in the oil check?
Chris: If this is definitely a failure of an engine covered by MSB-043, could these posts be moved to that thread?

Not subject to the borescope.
Just the metal check every 50 hours.

[Steve]

Alan - Your wife did a great job, but I am sure that she was shaken by the experience. Get her back up in the air in your DA50. Getting "back on the horse" ASAP is important, especially if she is a relatively new pilot. I had a partial engine failure on my second solo flight as a student pilot in a Piper Tomahawk in 1981. Luckily, I had just taken off from KPNE (long runways), and I just chopped the throttle and put it back down. My instructor bought me a Coke and sent me back out in another Tomahawk an hour later.

[ZAV]

Wow. Scary. Glad we’re complaining about Austro engines instead of discussing a disaster. Great job by your wife getting the plane to the ground safely. We’ll all be waiting to hear the findings.

[Boatguy]

Which AD(s) applied to the engine? Was it 30hrs since a borescope for MSB-043, or just the metal in the oil check?

Not subject to the borescope.
Just the metal check every 50 hours.

You were getting oil reports with close to zero metal, not even close to the danger zone in the MSB, yet your wife had a catastrophic failure just 30hrs after the last oil sample. This is a real heads up to everyone subject to MSB-039, MSB-043 and the associated ADs.

It's clear that Austro is just guessing with these 50hr inspections. Owners behind an engine built by Austro (as opposed to Mercedes) have been very lucky thus far. A catastrophic engine failure over mountains, in IMC, at night, during a go-around, etc. is just one (two?) step away from a tragedy.

Well done by your wife!

[RookieFlyer]

You were getting oil reports with close to zero metal, not even close to the danger zone in the MSB, yet your wife had a catastrophic failure just 30hrs after the last oil sample. This is a real heads up to everyone subject to MSB-039, MSB-043 and the associated ADs.

It's clear that Austro is just guessing with these 50hr inspections. Owners behind an engine built by Austro (as opposed to Mercedes) have been very lucky thus far. A catastrophic engine failure over mountains, in IMC, at night, during a go-around, etc. is just one (two?) step away from a tragedy.

Well done by your wife!

Making a reasonable guess that thermal fatigue caused piston failure, we already know that high pressure injector wear is mostly caused by water and/or foreign particle fuel contamination (e.g. oxidation particles) etching micro grooves into the injector sealing surface(s). This results in an uneven fuel spray pattern onto the piston crown(s) that when ignited creates the localized hot spots that can lead to stress cracking and eventually catastrophic failure if left unchecked. For both the Mercedes and Austro E4 engine variants, this originally resulted the 900-hour Injector Replacement MSB.

Given that Austro is now producing a replacement piston designed to withstand higher thermal stresses (and hopefully to a better margin than the original Mercedes spec), where does this leave the ongoing issue of injector wear that causes the hotspots? Should the injectors in future be replaced at shorter intervals?

[vyzerion]

Hi Alan, thanks for the heads up, and great job to your wife! I own a DA-40NG (2020) and after the MSB, I developed a software application that performs anomaly detection & diagnostics on the AE3 datalogs (my day job is at Google AI). Now, after every flight, I pull the datalogs from my flight and upload the dat a to the portal where the AI model inspects it. If you have the ability to pull the datalogs (last 8 hours or so) with the canbus cable and the AE300 wizard, I would love to take a look at it to see if any anomaly could be detected prior to the incident, and share results with you. If interested contact me at sipple at google.com