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I recently decided to switch from building an RV8 (or not building as the case may be) to a Bearhawk and have an IO-360 that I had purchased for the RV8. Was wondering if anyone had built a Bearhawk with the 200HP IO-360 and what their thoughts were on the performance vs weight and fuel burn were. I will be selling the RV8 project and have been trying to decide if I should sell the engine with it or keep it for the Bearhawk.
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I have not built one as you describe, but based upon my experience, I would say that an IO-360 would be an excellent - if not near-perfect - middle ground between the best possible take off and landing performance at light and medium weights.
With an IO-540 for instance, I have far more takeoff performance than landing performance - I can get out of significantly smaller spots than I can land, at light and medium weights.
At full gross, the IO-540 is pretty much the perfect balance.
Jonathan -
Most of us that are using the 4-cylinder Lycomings are using angle-valve cylinders, so as far as the fit in the cowl and such, it should work fine. One concern would be making sure that your engine is designed to use a mount that you can get from Mark at Bearhawk Aircraft, unless you were planning to make one. There were lots of variations in engine configurations, and the safest bet to make sure that yours would fit without a hassle would be a quick phone call to Bob. He knows Bearhawks and engines very well. I'm assuming yours is a Lycoming, but I think even the 6-cylinder Continental IO-360 will fit in the Bearhawk, though I don't know what you'd need to mount it.Comment
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We are building an IO-360 plane. We have the engine but are a ways off from flying yet. We build our own engine mount and cowling so I don't think we will be much help there but we think the Lyc IO-360 is a great engine for the Bearhawk.Comment
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