Subaru Aircraft Engine by Crossflow

I am having to learn this blog stuff so this is the second post of the same thing; not sure where the first post went!  This was meant to be linked to the photo in the previous post…

Crossflow was a Canadian company that used various Subaru engines as the basis for an aircraft engine.  They added bits like an Engine Control Unit (ECU), a fuel injection systems, inlet manifolds, wiring harnass and a gearbox that would bring the crank speed down to the required propeller speed.

They seem to have sold a few engines and then they went bust.  I have been working on one of these that was bought for use in a DreamAircraft Tundra, also from Canada.  When Crossflow went bust we were left in the dark and have had to puzzle out what they have done, mistakes and all.  Before I lurch off and slag Crossflow off let me say that I do not think that they set out to cheat anyone, or that they deliverately made mistakes to save  money.  The world of aviation, whilst seemingly awash with money, is a difficult place to actually make money.  This is mostly because the production runs are so small that it is very difficult to amortize your costs, and start up costs are huge.

So, whilst I am going to point out what problems I have found with the Crossflow product, I think that these came about because they were pinched by cash flow issues- in the case of this particular engine.  Whilst the engine has not yet been run extensively the basic engineering seems good and mostly the workmanship is also good.

OK, enough background.  The engine that I have been dealing with is a (I think) 2.2 litre one that has an IHI Turbo fitted to it- so not an ‘original’ Subaru supplied turbo.  It is fuel injected and has a DTA S60 ECU.  I have had great support from DTA in the UK (http://www.dtafast.co.uk/).  The first problem that was encountered was that the crank sensor (a hall sensor) was incorrectly wired in that its shield was earthed at both sides.  I didn’t pick this up but another Crossflow user did and I happened to see his post on the Aeroelectric forum (great forum by the way).  DTA recomends earthing on only one side and the engine won’t start if you have the shield earthed on both sides.

There were several other problems with the wiring as well, viz.; two of the high tension coils were not properly wired and not recieving power so the engine ran on only 2 out of the 4 cylinders at first.  The starter wire was not connected through.  The oil temperature sensor was not wired with a resistor as recomended by DTA.  No fuel pumps were supplied, nor any pressure regulator.

But worst of all so far, two of the oil seals in the gearbox were completely incorrectly specified.  They had a rating of 5 bar and there was 22 bar being delivered to them.  In my next post I’ll describe what happened and how we are busy trying to solve this problem…