Zonsen Aero Engines - Rapture Aviation (Adelaide)

[BurnieM]

Chinese companies can produce western quality products if they want to.

I trust western QA regardless of where the product is made.

Zonshen is a Chinese company with very little western reputation.

 

Yes, Chinese car quality is getting much better.

Yes, Zonshen have produced millions of small motorcycle engines.

Talking about cars manufactured in much bigger volumes does not tell you much about the reliability/quality of a small volume specialist engine.

 

What was their testing regime ?

What faults have occurred in production engines ? How did they fix it ?

What proportion of total engines had this fault ? How many hours ran till this fault occurred ?

I do not expect to get answers to any of these questions.

 

So we fall back to my original "warm, fuzzy feeling" requirement;

Do you have 200 or more engines with 500 hours or more running in the wild and what faults/number of faults have occurred ?

(single model, we have 20 of this, 40 of that, 30 of this and 50 of that does not cut it)

 

Edited November 14 by BurnieM

[Moneybox]

Hopefully Rotax don't lower their standards to meet a price challenge. Sometimes a company with a good reputation fails miserably to keep up quality control. 

 

Take Australian company Codan as an example. They produce a range of metal detectors under the Minelab brand. Their old products where they developed a very good reputation were exceptional in build quality, performance and endurance. In recent years they have started producing rubbish. Their machines still perform well but fail more often than not. These products sell at premium prices but usually fail before the operator manages to become familiar with the controls. Most people would use these machines in remote areas operating for days to weeks at a time and their new machines often fail to last those few weeks. The only reason they continue to sell their products is that there is no effective competition. Their warranty service is good but that doesn't help the poor sole who only had three weeks off work and travelled 1000km or more before being let down by a brand new machine from what used to be a reputable company.

 

Competition is good for price control but build quality and endurance are more important especially when you have a long way to fall.

[facthunter]

It's when they "sub" stuff out that  the quality drops. Lowest bidder gets the Contract. Like JEEP_ and Indians in the 20's.  I think everyone does it to some extent. OEM is the listed original product manufacturer. !2 month replacement warrantee might suit a small tyre inflator  that would not inflate one tractor tyre without overheating and dying. Nev

[Admin]

@Rapture you snuck this one through and ignored the site rules although the site rules say absolutely NO advertising/promotion of your own products in this site without prior approval. This is because of the high costs of running this resource for everyone so I get a bit upset if I am paying a lot of money out of my pocket each month whilst others make money for themselves from it. I think the decent thing to do is to make a donation towards the costs, don't you?

[Rapture]

1 hour ago, Admin said:

@Rapture you snuck this one through and ignored the site rules although the site rules say absolutely NO advertising/promotion of your own products in this site without prior approval. This is because of the high costs of running this resource for everyone so I get a bit upset if I am paying a lot of money out of my pocket each month whilst others make money for themselves from it. I think the decent thing to do is to make a donation towards the costs, don't you?

My sincere apologies Ian.  I didn’t intend to break any rules. Please let me address it as you have suggested.  Please PM me to discuss if I haven’t addressed it in what you consider to be a fair manner.  I’d like you on-side, not off-side!

[Rapture]

Hopefully now corrected thanks Ian.  Please PM me if there is anything else I need to do.

[Admin]

3 minutes ago, Rapture said:

Hopefully now corrected thanks Ian.  Please PM me if there is anything else I need to do.

Thanks mate, greatly appreciated and I am sure the users of the site will support you

[Underwood]

I've yet to meet anyone with experience of these Engines and as others have mentioned, it will be in the field experince over a good sized user base that will ultimately determine the success or lack of for any Product.

 

There may still be a sizeable market for use of this catagory of engines in Drones that could be leveraged.

 

Regarding Sub-ing out stuff leading to quality drops:

Rotax has always subbed out its 912 Cylinder production

I think it would be very hard to find an Engine manufacturer that doesnt do something similar , Pistons for example are routinely sourced elsewhere.

 

The perception that Chinese = poor quality has a sound base, my experience is that China whilst perfectly happy to churn out garbage is also very capable of high quality production when it is demanded.

 

[danny_galaga]

I think it was discussed in another thread that some Canadians and Americans have been trying these engines. I used to be a neighsayer regarding these engines but I'm only hearing good things about them mechanically. Price is another matter 

 

I think I also pointed out in a different thread that a pretty good indication these engines are A grade is that they are supplied to the Chinese military for surveillance drones. If there's one customer you don't want to upset, it's the Chinese military 😄. 

[onetrack]

But the only requirement for a military drone, is that the engine be reliable enough - and cheap enough - to last just one mission!

 

Bit of a difference to expecting your aircraft engine to perform 100% reliably for 2000 hrs, until overhaul!

[BurnieM]

Supplying engines to drone manufacturers is a good testing ground. It enables you to build volume and resolve problems and develop your models out of the public eye. I believe Rotax did something similar. Only problem is nobody knows about the volumes, problems resolved and expected (true) life of the engine.

 

So now we are in the show me what you have got stage from a company most of us have never heard of.

 

[F10]

This could be interesting....like me, you can pick up a pretty tidy Skyfox Gazelle for under $30 000, way cheaper than any kit. With the "more affordable" (sounds better than "cheaper"😄) Zonsen, you could fully re-build the aircraft, and if changing rego to experimental, could put in a 100Hp Zonsen. All up the cost of this should be way less than a new kit? Lets face it, ZONSEN prices could keep some older recreational aircraft in the air.

[facthunter]

I wouldn't recommend increasing the Power on the engine of  a  Gazelle for the average operator. 85 Knots is about as fast as that wing should go.  Nev

[Area-51]

Didn't the whole ultralight experimental aviation scene start in a garage with somebody strapping on a severely unpredictable McCollach rip start edge trimmer motor to a loin cloth spread out over a collection of rudimentary positioned hand selected portions of bamboo and choosing a patch of arbitrarily suitable ground upon which to end the short flight upon? 🤔🤷🏼‍♂️

[facthunter]

Not exactly There was a quite good Enfield-McCulloch two stroke fairly widely used in autogyros and maybe Flying Fleas.( Pou de Ciel) by Heni Mignot. in the early 30's  In the USA towards the end of the 20's competitions using motorcycle engines were conducted in the USA  The engines used were 4 strokes and HP between 18 and 25 were used one notable a Henderson 4  was specifically developed as a Heath_Henderson . The planes were probably in the ultralight category at todays weights . Later in the Heyday of "Popular Mechanics "magazines various designs almost universally used converted VW motors . IN Australia Various two stroke Lawnmower engines were used most of  which were not much good till the smaller air cooled 447 etc Rotax came along and gave more certainty to the whole operation. Nev

[F10]

31 minutes ago, facthunter said:

I wouldn't recommend increasing the Power on the engine of  a  Gazelle for the average operator. 85 Knots is about as fast as that wing should go.  Nev

Yes agree, 85 Kts is the start of the yellow arc. But it's not so much the speed, its the improved rate of climb and take off performance that would be good!

[facthunter]

The engines used in Russian Drones appear to be mostly based on a Limbach L-155 motor German designed Produced in Russia , Iran and China by sone manufacturer other than the Rotax copy firm.  Nev

[danny_galaga]

2 hours ago, onetrack said:

But the only requirement for a military drone, is that the engine be reliable enough - and cheap enough - to last just one mission!

 

Bit of a difference to expecting your aircraft engine to perform 100% reliably for 2000 hrs, until overhaul!

SURVEILLANCE drones. They notch up thousands of hours very quickly. I'm not THAT daft that I think an engine design to last three hours is something to consider for a passenger plane 😄

[facthunter]

The only  engines I know of with a fairly low design life were Prewar Auro Union and Mercedes Race engines. It doesn't mean they were JUNK. Gardner diesels were not used even though they last a lot longer. They were used in trawlers and small coastal boats. Horses for Courses.  Nev

[Area-51]

1 hour ago, Area-51 said:

Didn't the whole ultralight experimental aviation scene start in a garage with somebody strapping on a severely unpredictable McCollach rip start edge trimmer motor to a loin cloth spread out over a collection of rudimentary positioned hand selected portions of bamboo and choosing a patch of arbitrarily suitable ground upon which to end the short flight upon? 🤔🤷🏼‍♂️

I forgot to add "all" early pioneering flights were performed by Aunty Jack while listening to a fading and stretched portable Realistic cassette player tape playing Skyhooks album Living In The 70's.

[danny_galaga]

Just occurred to me that if the Orange Guy stays true to his promise of 60% tariff on Chinese made goods, that'll kill their US market.

[Rapture]

11 hours ago, onetrack said:

But the only requirement for a military drone, is that the engine be reliable enough - and cheap enough - to last just one mission!

On the contrary, and I have this directly from the former CEO of Insitu, the largest drone manufacturer in the world, their biggest problem was the reliability of the powerplants in their drones.  They have a $1m+ drone powered by a $50k engine.  They needed the drones to be in the air continuously over the battlefields and any engine failure in ostensibly a cheap engine results in a loss of a very expensive drone and the loss of capability until another could get on station.

Rotax pulled out of at least one drone market (the Bayraktar TB2 from Turkey, a big seller after the Ukraine conflict) to be replaced by someone.  So someone with a Rotax type engine is now filling that space.  Hours will be built rapidly and reliability will be put to the test for whatever engine this Rotax replacement might be…

[Rapture]

3 hours ago, danny_galaga said:

Just occurred to me that if the Orange Guy stays true to his promise of 60% tariff on Chinese made goods, that'll kill their US market.

That is for sure!

[BurnieM]

21 hours ago, Rapture said:

...

Rotax pulled out of at least one drone market (the Bayraktar TB2 from Turkey, a big seller after the Ukraine conflict) to be replaced by someone.  So someone with a Rotax type engine is now filling that space.  Hours will be built rapidly and reliability will be put to the test for whatever engine this Rotax replacement might be…

 

Looks like the TB2 used Rotax 912is. Rotax stopped supplying them in October 2020.

Bayraktar are talking about their own engine (BM100) for the TB2.

Only 20 have been made but they are talking about ramping up to 250/annum next year.

Bayraktar saying that they need 200 engines a year just for maintenance of the existing TB2 fleet plus however many new drones they produce.

 

So what engine have they been using 2021 to 2024 ?

While this means the existing supplier has lots of hours to test/upgrade their engine, it does not mean anything to us unless we get verifiable data.

 

Edited November 19 by BurnieM

[facthunter]

Perhaps they can supply the Engine Mount rubbers?   Nev