I fly a Mooney 201 with a Lycoming IO-360 engine. When I bought a new engine in 2008 I could not believe the number of ‘different’ IO-360s that they built. And of course the one I needed was more expensive than many of the others. I just looked at the Lycoming website a few minutes ago and they make 108 IO-360 variants. Those are just IO-360s and do not include the HIO or AIO or any other variants. OK, I buy that they may only have different accessory sections, but why?
I also blame airframe manufacturers. Why do they NEED a separate variant? The Piper Arrow has an IO-360. Why the bleep didn’t Mooney choose that engine when designing the E, F or J models? And why didn’t Lycoming tell Mooney that a different variant would be cheaper for them now and their customers in the future? The fewer the variants the less expensive the engine will be. I would think that would be a motivation for both parties.
I can’t believe that there needs to be more than 1 or 2 variants of this very popular 200 HP engine. I feel better now…