Didn't find much about this in the search window. New LS powered STOL setup. On the surface it looks good, but I know there has to be some major downsides to the LS platform.
Where are our experts??
http://www.moosemods.com/home.html

Interesting. I’m a car guy but still not sold on that engine in airplanes.

Are they claiming it’s a STOL Aircraft ? Never saw a landing number. I did see a takeoff at 475’, nice but I can land AND takeoff in that distance, Maybe that was with the mentioned 10kt quartering tailwind.....who does that !

It needs a LOT bigger tire. 35” would look nice. I saw one place said 26” but user adjustable I’m sure.

It did have nice cruise speed.

No interior photos, the “gallery” sucks

Bearings in car engines seem comically small compared to airplane engine bearings.
Airplane engines run at full power 90% of the time.
Car engines run at full power 10% of the time? (~ish)

Water cooled airplanes make about as much sense as air cooled submarines

maybe, but he can do that while carrying your plane

there are also a couple of LS powered bearhawks in canada, Some of the LS installations seem to do well. But the one in the south african ravin overheated and burned a couple people to death. There are a lot of ways to screw up experimental engine installations, liquid cooled or not. Personally i'd take the russian radial in the moose over any other option.

Is that the same engine that’s STC’ed for the SeaBee?

We have a Moose with the Russian radial engine for sale on our field. It’s been for sale for a few years. I’ve never seen it fly.

Great size....kind of a mini Beaver.

Tony, they're claiming it's a great upgrade to the standard Murphy Moose, which is sold as "A Fantastic Bush Plane" on their website.

http://www.murphyair.com/detail/moose.html

Of all the ways to improve an airplane, putting in a car engine strikes me as one of the lowest ROI. It's a whole lot of engineering and fabrication work, and you're increasing the failure risk on a really important part of the airplane.

I remember a great EAA magazine article with an RV that had an auto engine conversion. A guy spent thousands of hours on it, and lots of money, and talked us through all the problems and risks. And then they did the performance test next to his buddy's standard RV with an aircraft engine. And they were within a few %, I'm not even sure the auto conversion was better.

Not my cup of tea. You want a bigger engine on a Moose, put a bigger aircraft engine on it

You're missing the point. One of the main reasons to build an experimental aircraft is to experiment. If you just want a big bush plane that is known to work, buy a beaver.

Oh boy, here we go again... So typical of discussions of "experimental" aircraft by those who have never set foot outside the "certificated" aircraft world.

Let's look at a few points in hopes of introducing a little reality to the discussion.

First of all, let's address the "car engines run at full power only 10% of the time" comment. People making this comment clearly have not kept p with modern engine development programs. Modern car engine design typically comes with thousands of hours of brutal full-power runs, cold-soaked-to-full-throttle runs, sea level to high altitude runs, and on and on and on. If one of our Conti or Lyc's was subjected to this kind of testing it would grenade part way through. If you want to get a glimpse of the kind of testing that's done, go to youtube and search on "Ford Ecoboost Torture Test" to find a series of videos that document a single engine that went through hell on a dyno, then ran 24 hours of full power track racing, then hauled tons of logs, etc etc. And that was testing done just for marketing purposes, not product development / lifecycle testing!

Now let's look at the whole concept of an automotive engine in an airplane. Here we see where the rubber hits the road, or more aptly, where the power hits the air. Without doubt, the single greatest challenge in auto conversions is the prop speed reducer unit, PSRU, needed to step down the several-thousand RPM engine speed to comply with the aerodynamic limitations of a propeller. Typical speed reduction ratios are in the 2.2:1 to 2.7:1 range. This speed reduction can be done in any number of ways, via drive belts running on different pulley sizes, to planetary gearbox arrangements. Many issues have arisen with PSRUs, including failure to damp prop vibration, failure to provide adequate thrust bearings, failure to provide adequate lubrication under all flight regimes, failure to provide adequate cooling under all flight regimes, etc etc etc. The PSRU seems to be the one area in the mechanical equation that brings the most failures until a solid and reliable design is achieved.

Cooling is sometimes an issue, however those who have operated liquid-cooled aircraft engines will tell you they'll never go back to an air-cooled engine. Especially those who use that liquid cooling to provide copious cabin heat in frigid winter operations!

Fuel delivery failures have brought down a lot of experimental aircraft, whether powered by auto conversions or Contis or Lycs.

The general consensus amongst those who closely watch GA and especially Experimental aircraft accident statistics is that automobile engine conversions typically experience problems with ancillary systems, not the core automotive engine itself.

The LS-series engines seem to do well in aircraft. Some of them are babied, and some of them have the living daylights run out of them. An acquaintance has an LS1-powered Sea Bee. It developed a critical leak when he was in the far north. Getting a new engine took no time at all, didn't cost very much, and its installation in a remote location wasn't difficult. His opinion was that a similarly-debilitating failure of the stock "certificated" engine would have taken considerably longer to repair at a cost likely closer to 5-10 times the cost of getting the Corvette engine swapped out.

My acquaintance also comments that when he has pushed his Sea Bee off the dock and is sailing in treacherous river currents or high winds, he KNOWS the engine will start. He can't say that about the certificated engines in his other aircraft. He's had to fly home commercial when his Conti 550 let him down, and he's glad his Corvette engine won't be the subject of a mass cylinder recall like that which impacted the cylinders in another of his aircraft.

He has also reported that re-engining the Sea Bee with a "certificated" engine in order to give the Sea Bee the same performance as the LS1 would have been financially ruinous. With the LS1 the Sea Bee (or as he calls it, the Vee Bee) performs quite nicely off the water, something nobody will ever say about its performance with the original certificated engine!

I personally own a Conti and a Lyc. If I were looking to upgrade a workhorse airplane like a Moose I would certainly consider an LS engine, with very careful attention paid to selection of the rest of the powerplant package. The devil is in the details. Pay attention to the details and you can find some pretty amazing performance in an automotive conversion.

Not sure if you're going to Oshkosh but he's got a booth this year.

I push my C185 from the dock all the time and my Cont IO-550 starts on the 2nd blade all the time.

I look at what these guys are spending to build these homebuilts and you can buy a good C185 for the price or a Beaver in some case.

No, they make about as much sense as water cooled car engines.

I helped a little with a local gentleman building a Murphy moose.
Got some right seat passenger time only.. Wheels then amphibs...

He really wanted a beaver... but thought a good one was too much $$$$.
The project started with a beaver being expensive and a Moose being comparatively cheap.

I think if he were alive today... in retrospect .....I "think" he'd say the Moose was expensive and the Beaver was cheap.

He had dreams of flying the moose to Alaska... and by the time the years of building were done... it didn't happen.

Jeff Wright said it best... do you want the flexibility of an "Experimental" aircraft to fly?

Leldon

Please let me know the next time you find a brand new, zero time C185 or Beaver, and what it costs!

I built my aircraft because there was no way I could afford to buy it. (Mmmm I love the smell of that brand new leather interior!) Now that it's flying, I know there's no way I could afford the maintenance on a certificated aircraft that offers similar performance. I'll happily buy you a beer when we can sit down and discuss your C185 annual that cost less than $300!