Continental announced at Oshkosh that is had earned certification for fadec control on its big turbocharged engines, and that it had completed testing and knows how to qualify all of its engine models to burn 94UL unleaded avgas. The company also announced a number of price cuts and incentives for factory engines and certain replacement parts.
Continental has pioneered computer control of its engines over the past decade and had approvals for its naturally aspirated engines. Now, with the new certification, the big turbocharged 310-hp 550 engines’ electronic control has been extended across the engine line. Specific approval for fadec in each engine-airframe combination is also required, but is available for popular models such as the Cirrus.
Also for Cirrus, Continental has a reduced-cost program to exchange the runout 550 engine in a Cirrus for a factory engine, including exchanging a naturally-aspirated engine for a turbo, or the Cirrus factory turbo-normalized engine for a fully turbocharged Continental. The company has a program to trim the costs on its factory rebuilt or factory new engines for any application and expects those complete engines to be cost competitive with any quality field overhaul, but will of course, contain a zero-time logbook, new serial number, and factory warranty.
The high powered turbocharged engines were among the last models to be tested for use of the 94UL avgas. Even though Continental’s engines can operate on the fuel-which is actually 100LL avgas without the lead added-it will be some time before the fuel becomes available. Because the industry cannot support dual avgas supply lines, it will require a shift from one fuel to the other and the timetable for that to happen is impossible to predict. For complete information go to genuinecontinental.aero.
