Diamond Aircraft says its in-house diesel engine, the Austro, is performing as expected after about a year in service and fleet life of about 11,000 hours. In a podcast interview with AVweb at EAA AirVenture Thursday, Ken Shaelkin, Diamond’s director of customer support, said there are 132 engines in service and many have gone through the 300-hour inspection of the flywheel, alternator and high-pressure pump. He said all components are behaving and wearing as expected and customers are reporting no problems with the engines. The highest-time engines have almost 500 hours on them and that’s another maintenance interval.
Shaelkin said Diamond has designed its conversion program to encourage legacy DA42 and DA40 owners with the original Thielert diesel engines to upgrade to the 170-horsepower Austro, which was developed in-house by Diamond through a separate company. Owners can opt for an engine-only swap or a complete upgrade to bring their DA42s to the same standard as the NG model that the new engines helped create. There is also an option to put Lycoming 360s on the DA42.
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