personal experience
Mark said he wanted to see personal, first-hand experience. I can provide plenty of that. As Darrell mentioned, I have written extensively about my experiences with my Eggenfellner STi engine on my builder's web site. See
http://brian76.mystarband.net/engine.htm for all the details.
The Eggenfellner STi experience has been a nightmare from the beginning. Jan has quite a tendency to jump onto new things without thinking them through thoroughly. The STi was an extreme example of that. Nearly everything but the block and heads have had to be swapped out, at least once. See here:
http://brian76.mystarband.net/engineMay07.htm#may29
and here:
http://brian76.mystarband.net/engineJun07.htm#jun5
for summaries of the problems.
The biggest problem is that, while Eggenfellner at least stood behind the problems at first, once the PSRU problems became evident, he became more and more surly, unhelpful, and uncooperative about solving the remaining problems. This began in May, '07.
One of my favorite issues (and there are plenty to pick from) is how Eggenfellner inexplicably abandoned the wastegate control that was supposedly on the engines when we bought them. By the time we got the engines, the original wastegate control had been abandoned, with no replacement. We've been abandoned to come up with a wastegate control on our own.
Another favorite is how we found out the STi was overspeeding the supercharger (beyond the manufacturer's specs) even with the Gen 2 PSRU, and even more so with the Gen 3 PSRU. Eggenfellner provided no support, and only surliness, in response to that problem. When an STi owner in Australia decided to look into getting our own larger supercharger pulley to resolve the problem, Eggenfellner even refused to provide any info on where the SC pulley came from, or even how it was attached to the SC.
Jan has also been especially surly, rude, and uncooperative with a couple of the other STi owners. I can understand him being rude to me, as I've publicized a lot of this stuff, but it's even more irritating when he's rude and unhelpful to these other guys. He forced one STi owner to remove his installed engine and ship it ot him for the upgrades, as he said he didn't trust that person to do the work right. He's been especially rude to another customer who has only asked simple questions in the most deferential and polite manner possible. On his list just last week, he was rude and arrogant to that person yet again. The customer simply asked why the list of additional small parts needed for the Gen 3 PSRU hadn't been sent out ahead of time, instead of the usual Eggenfellner method of casually dropping it on everyine at the last mnute, after the PSRUs had already been shipped. Eggenfellner's snotty reply included ""
If you are generally an unhappy person, we do not want to hear from you ".
Eggenfellner also seems to have quite a problem accepting responsibility for things. Everything is always the customer's fault.
I could go on and on and on about the problems, but if you want details, see the links. My awful choice of Eggenfellner engine has added 2-3 years to my project time. My wife keeps asking me to just trash the STi and get a Lycoming. One STi customer actually did that - he tossed the Eggenfellner and put in a Lycoming. But not many people can afford to just write off $40K. When I bought this engine, I was under the impression that it was a complete working FWF that could be just bolted onto the firewall and run. Nothing could have further from reality.
As Darrell wrote, one big thing Eggenfellner needs to do is pick a package , stick with it, and refine it, not keep flitting around and jumping onto every new bandwagon that comes along. It appears that he MAY be doing that now with the H6 engines.
Summary - i deeply regret buying Eggenfellner, because of Jan's attitude problems as much as the physical problems, and I certainly can't recommend it to anyone.