Lycoming
Lycoming Engines is a major
aircraft engine company, known primarily for their smaller
general aviation engines. For most of its history Lycoming has been part of the
AVCO group as
AVCO Lycoming. In 1987 AVCO was purchased by
Textron to become
Textron Lycoming. In 2002 the company was renamed
Lycoming Engines.
Lycoming first set up business in
1916 in
Williamsport, Pa (in Lycoming County) as a
sewing machine manufacturer, and soon branched out into
bicycle manufacturing as well. Through the early post-
WWI era they increasingly focused on
automobile engines, and at one time became a major supplier for
Auburn, which produced the
Auburn,
Cord, and
Duesenberg lines. Eventually they became their major supplier, and in
1929 Cord bought the company, placing it under his
Auburn Manufacturing umbrella group. Also in 1929 Lycoming produced their first aviation engine, the
radial R-680. This was a fairly successful design, and was used widely in light
aircraft, including Cord's
Travel Air.
Through the
1930s Lycoming made a number of efforts to break into the "big league" with high-power engine designs. The 1200
hp O-1230 was their attempt to produce a
hyper engine, an aviation engine that could produce one
horsepower per
cubic inch (46 kW/L) of
engine displacement. The hyper engine concept was a psychological target for engine designers in the 1930s; in order to make really long-distance flights routine, an engine of this sort of
power-to-weight ratio would be needed to lift the required
fuel and still have power left over to lift the cargo. However the O-1230 took so long to reach service that it had been bypassed by other designs and their
US$500,000 (over US$6 million in year
2000) was not recouped. Another attempt was made to rescue the design by stacking two O-1230's to make the 2300 hp (1,700 kW)
H engine H-2470, but the only design to use it, the
P-54, never entered production.
Not to be stopped by the O-1230's failure, they turned to an even larger design, the
R-7755, the largest aviation
piston engine ever built. However this design ran into problems, and was only ready for use at the very end of
World War II, when the aviation world was turning to
jet engines for power on future large designs. There was apparently some interest in using it on the
B-36 Peacemaker bomber, but the
Pratt & Whitney R-4360 was used instead.
In
1939 Cord re-organized all of his aviation holdings into the AVCO group, at which point they became AVCO Lycoming. They also leased a government-owned plant in
Stratford, Connecticut and produced
Wright radial engines under licence. After the war this plant was converted to produce the
T53 turboshaft engine, one of their more successful designs. From this point on the piston and
turbine engine lines remained separate, with the piston lines being built in the original Williamsport factories, and turbines in Stratford.
Their most successful post-war products were a series of
flat-4 and
flat-6 air-cooled general aviation engines. Most famous among these are the
O-235 and
O-360 fours, and the
O-540 six. The vast majority of light aircraft today are powered by a version of these engines, covering everything from the 100 to 360 hp (75 to 270 kW) range. Other engines in the series include the basic
O-320 four,
O-580 six and
O-720 eight, and the advanced
TIGO-541 which delivered 450 hp (340 kW) from an engine the same size as the O-540.
In the early
1980s the bottom dropped out of the general aviation market, and Lycoming's piston engine business suddenly disappeared. Attempts were made to move some of the turbine production to Williamsport, but this led to a series of
quality control problems and eventually the attempt was abandoned.
Textron purchase
Textron purchased the company in
1986Another attempt to rescue Williamsport was made in an attempt to introduce the "radical"
SCORE engine, a
Wankel engine originally developed in a partnership between
Curtiss-Wright and
John Deere. Curtiss-Wright lost interest in the design just as it was maturing and sold it to John Deere, who brought in Lycoming to sell into the aviation markets. They were guaranteed a startup run by
Cessna, also owned by Textron. Just as production was ready to start Cessna announced they were exiting the small-aircraft business, and SCORE was cancelled. The remains of the John Deere licenses were later purchased by
Rotary Power International, who produced a 340hp version for a short time.
Textron eventually decided that the piston engine market was dead, and that Lycoming should exist only as a "shell", offering parts and service to the huge number of general aviation engines in service. Accordingly they sold off the turbine division to
AlliedSignal in
1996, and started selling off the machinery from Williamsport in
1995.
# [
1]
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Textron Lycoming - rather basic home page
*
Lycoming engines - an extensive list of every version of Lycoming's general aviation engines
