Hello Supercub.org, sorry I am so late to the party but I am here now and hopefully I can share some of my experiences and knowledge I have gained racing aircraft and various other aviation exploits.
Getting right to it, I would like to offer more info to this thread specifically the Titan 409 engine, as it seem to be the next real monster engine for those "off road" aircraft that have to have the best!
The original question concerning "FADEC" and Titan is a bit miss leading. Titan does not actually produce its own FADEC but is selling many engines these days using the EFii Electronic Fuel Injection and DUAL ignition system. Rather than droning on how great it is go to their website or contact Robert Paisley of protect. flyefii.com
Here is a pic of the EFii injectors on my R409 RV8.
Here is my panel showing the Efii control head to the left. THis allows you to fine tune the fuel and timing for your installation as well as providing backup engine info like RPM, Oil temp, fuel flow, etc.
In this thread the XIO-409 is mentioned and I thought it might be worth a quick background on the 409 and the difference between the X series 409 and the R series 409.
About 5 years ago the former owner of ECi hired my partner Andrew Higgs an FI racing engine designer to develop a stroked crank kit for the 360 engine. Andrew put in over 5000 hours developing the 409 kit that is a combination of a very strong new fully counterweighted crank, lighter but stronger connecting rods, lightweight racing pistons that were designed as a kit that could be installed into any wide deck 360 case.
Here is a great shot of a stock 360 crank and a 409 crank:
After trying to work with several different outlets for the 409 kit including Superior and ECi, I was able organize the 409 as part of a new experimental engine shop I set up for ECi called Titan Aircraft Engines.
Once we started testing the 409 installed in a stock parallel 360 configuration we realized that while we had this incredible additional cc potential, the parallel cylinders simply could not breath enough to get the potential we felt possible in the 409 engine. The x409 series as it is called only produced around 212hp. While this is good compared to a 360 it was nowhere near the 230 we thought it could make.
We then put together an angle valve version of the 409 and whooalla, the engine made just under 230hp and looked like we might have something. The only problem was now the weight. The new 490 crank is almost 30lbs heavier to handle the additional 100 lbs of torque and add the extra weight and cost of an angle valve cylinder, the damn engine was almost 350lbs! Not good when a 390 or 400 is about 335lbs. The extra 17hp was not worth the penalty in weight and cost.
The next project Andrew took on was the Cylinder. If you go back to the Franklin all aluminum cylinder days you will find that they really had it right, and I am sure had the company not been sold and made some pretty stupid mistakes, every air cooled cylinder would be built in such manner. Screwing aluminum head on to a steel sleeve in an air cooled engine when you think about it really does not make much sense. The dissimilar metals expand and contract so differently that you have to use rediculous clearances to compensate for our operating ranges. Oil consumption, compression, and inefficiency are all penalties we pay for this old school design.
The AX50 was since born and is quickly proving its potential. This one piece all aluminum cylinder with removable aluminum sleeve coated with Nickel Carbide coating is lighter and performs much better than either the parallel or angle valve cylinder with less weight, better cooling, and we believe longer service life:
AX50 Cylinders:
Simple explanation of our cylinder wall construction.
The AX50 is designed to be a direct replacement cylinder for either a parallel or angle valve wide deck lycoming 360 or 540 engine. The simplest way to describe the AX50; an all aluminum parallel cylinder that weighs 6.8 lbs less than a parallel cylinder but flows slightly more than an angle valve cylinder, that runs on low octane unleaded fuel/ethanol, and cools 20% better than the best cylinder out there.
Here are the different versions of R Series engines we now offer with the AX50 cylinders. Silver is a 245lb - 210hp R360, Red is a 285lb -230hp R409, and Blue is a 370lb R540 estimated to be 330hp. (we haven't dyne tested the 540 yet)
If you have any additional questions I'll try my best to answer your questions.
The only last item I want to mention is our new overhaul and upgrade service underway. Before you overhaul or possibly send your engine in for a prop inspection, please give me a call and lets talk about converting your existing 360 into one our many different engines. Even your 320 has some really cool opportunities….
Kevin Eldredge
805-996-0800
I am Relentless!