Great visit to Ly-Con Aircraft Engines in Visalia

I’m in Visalia for a few days for the arrival of grandbaby #6 so yesterday I stopped by Ly-Con Aircraft Engines. I was looking for a case to use to build an engine mount in place on my 2+2 fuselage. While I was waiting for Ken, Chris gave me the “nickel” tour as he called it. All I can say is wow, what an awesome place. We went through building after building of equipment, parts, NOS inventory and lots of Super Cub parts (engine and airframe). The building with carts that hold the engines currently torn down and awaiting final directions from owners and assembly had about 200 engines! I was very impressed to say the least. Their inventory of cylinders, cases, etc. was pretty amazing. Chris took me into the control room for their test cells, very impressive. Each engine goes through a run-up period with full diagnosis in every area of operation and RPM range you could want. Again it was pretty impressive. I was interested in what they thought of the O290D2 and it’s rebuild ability since I’m using one on my 2+2. Their response was that it’s not a big problem. I saw many a crated NOS O290 on their rack in their Cub section. For those of us being able to use a non-certified engine they can rebuild an O290D2 with O320 jugs, cam, etc making the engine not as orphaned as it seems to be. I like the idea of knowing that they can support my engine with out any big issues. If you are looking for something odd for an old engine chances are they have it; it just might take them a few days to find it. If you saw the massive inventory of parts you would understand why it could take a while to find some of the more obscure parts for our old engines. They also have some pretty cutting edge work they are doing in the race-engine field that’s leading into some STC’s on the horizon. All in all it was a pretty cool (well, at 108 degrees maybe not cool) way to spend part of an afternoon. I would not hesitate in the least to bring them an engine to rebuild. Oh yeah, they came up with a case for me to use to build up my engine mount so I'm on to the next step.

Marty57