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Superior Air Parts Owners / Shops / News

RudiGreyling

RudiGreyling

Well Known Member
XP owners and engine builder shops...

Question 1) Any new news? The last I heard was Brantley was in the running 23 July 2009 see quote below?

Question 2) If everything does go south with a no way out, then how compatible (or not) are our XP engines and parts to traditional Lycomings taking roller tappets and FI into consideration?

You experts out there please comment. (without getting into I could have told you so mood)

Regards
Rudi

N54SG said:
<SNIP> ="http://www.strasburger.com/_client/SAP-Plan-Documents/show.asp"]Superior Legal Doc's

Moral of the story, Brantly International, Inc. is the new "Stalking Horse" bidder for Superior. <SNIP>
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
The Brantly deal went down. Here is the ext of SAP announcement on 8-27.

"Yesterday, the acquisition plan presented by The Brantly Group was approved by the court. In approximately 30 days everything should be final and Superior will emerge out of bankruptcy. All of us here at Superior look forward to working along side of you, our valued customers, to take care of the aviation community. We are extremely grateful for your support during these difficult times and very much appreciate your business!"

To the best of my knowledge, all of the parts in the roller tappet SAP engine are compatible/interchangeable with Lycoming parts except the crankcase, roller tappets and camshaft.

Good Luck,
Mahlon
"The opinions and information provided in this and all of my posts are hopefully helpful to you. Please use the information provided responsibly and at your own risk."
 
Great News

That is great news. I have a Superior engine mounted on my yet to be flown RV8A. I hope a lot of the familiar names and faces reappear as a part of the emerging company. I always received great customer support from Superior.
 
Thanks Mahlon,

This is good news.

Both for exisisting owners (Warranty Spares), and future engine owners (Competition in free Market keeping Lycoming honest)

Keep us posted if you hear any other news.

Thanks
Rudi
 
You go Superior!!

Great News! Lets hope they get it up and running as it was before. It will be tough in the present economic conditions, but hopefully they will persevere and the supply side of the aircraft engine market will be tilted in favor of the consumer. Hopefully they are able to line up their suppliers they had before the Germans came in and trashed the relationships.
 
Let us also hope they keep the leftover pre-bankruptcy commitments. I know of at least one person owed an engine...
 
Well, the most recent Chapter 11 plan has been approved form what I can tell. Now the lawyers are taking a few million bucks, as usual. It seems that Brantly has paid Superior, but who knows what that means for us creditors. Or what their plans are for the business. Seems that all of the aviation news sites have dropped the ball on this ordeal. Nobody has reported anything in at least 6 months.
 
I spoke with Superior

I called Superior 2 months ago and actually spoke with someone there. I had thought that they were shut down completely during the Bankruptcy. Not the case. They were still shipping parts.

Haven't talked with them since. It will be interesting to see their next steps. The XP-360 website is no longer up but is noted as "Under Construction", the Superior site is still up.

I have a Superior engine that I haven't run yet so I am hoping for the best as Superior comes back to life.
 
Superior Air Parts is ALIVE!!!

I spoke with the folks at Superior yesterday. They are back in business. (I needed the p/n for the front crankshaft oil seal. Seems there are several to choose from, so on a whim, I tried their phone number...THEY ANSWERED! I got the p/n, SL13792). I have 8 hours on my engine, the oil seal was spinning with the crankshaft, and a good bit of oil was dripping out.

When I mentioned that I only had 8 hours on the engine, the tec guy switched me over to the warranty guy. They are going to send me a new oil seal. It seems they had tried several different seal / bonding methods, and I just happened to get one that did not work. Bottom line...new seal on its way, no charge to me.

Now for the Superior story as best as I can remember:
There is a Chinese company named Wang Fie Free Sky Aviation.
Wang Fie owns The Brantley Group.
Superior Air Parts and Brantley Helicopters is are part of The Brantley Group.

Brantley Helicopters was looking for a piston engine, approached Lycoming, but due to cost reasons, decided to look elsewhere for an engine. This is where the purchase of Superior Air Parts came in. Now, Superior Air Parts will be manufacturing engines for Brantley Helicopters.

Superior is back, and is apparently taking baby steps getting back in the game. They are selling parts and taking orders.

Now for some purely FYI, if interested: Do you remember the orange RV-6(A?) that Superior Air Parts used as a testbed and demonstrator? They used to bring it to all the big events. Well, it is for sale. They have decided not to use it as a promotion vehicle for their engines. Today, it has an XP-400 engine in it. They will sell it as is, or put an EP-360 in it. If interested, call Superior and talk to them (I was talking to Bill Blackwood in Warranty about the oil seal).
 
So I take it from your information, that Superior is currently only looking at selling/producing engines for helicopters, not for the experimental airplane market?
 
A few months ago some of the news sites reported that Lycoming had bought most of the assets of Superior. Did that sale not go through? If it did what IPR does Superior have to trade with?

I guess the basic question is what portion of its previous product line is Superior now selling?

Pete
 
It is my understanding that they "Owe" one additional XP-400 engine to the current owner of "Unleashed." I am writing to him now to make him aware of this engine.

That would still leave a nice RV for sale minus an engine.
 
When I talked to Superior a few day ago...

...I suggested that it would be "nice" if they would post some relevant info to this web site. The person I was talking to agreed, indicating the task was on their to-do list, but it has not been done yet.

And no, the deal with Lycoming did not go through. Lycoming did not get parts, IP, nada.

I have to believe that it is in Superior's best interest (and mine of course since I have a Superior XP engine) to let all of us know what is going on, what their intent is for the home built market, and when they plan to make a public statement of their companies mission.
 
breister said:
It is my understanding that they "Owe" one additional XP-400 engine to the current owner of "Unleashed." I am writing to him now to make him aware of this engine.

That would still leave a nice RV for sale minus an engine.
Click to expand...

Well, per the contract I was owed an engine.. But, since I filed a claim as an unsecured creditor in bankruptcy court, they don't owe me an engine anymore. I never knew if Superior was going to come around or not, so that was my only option. I waited until the deadline for creditors to give them all the time possible. So.. Since I have a claim, that pretty much voids my contract with them. I will end up like the rest of the unsecured creditors and probably get $5 rather then an engine worth over $30K. Pretty much sucks all around.

The XP-400SRE is awesome. I have 140 hours on it now. Bill Blackwood at Superior is a great guy also, he helped me understand a lot about my odd engine. Outside of being screwed by the bankruptcy, I have nothing bad to say about Superior.

As for the engine on the RV-6A, it is not an SRE. Only 8.7:1 as I remember. At one point I heard it had about 150 hours of dyno time. It was the main test bed for the XP-400 program. It was mounted on the RV-6A but never flown.

If anybody else gets any news, I would love to hear about it.

Thanks,
Tom
"Unleashed" N54SG
 
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