On October 15th, 2020 Van’s posted a link on their website regarding Lycoming’s “annual experimental aircraft engine price adjustments” set to take place on November 1, 2020. Here is the price list from that announcement:
It has always been our intent to install the Lycoming IO-390 (210 hp) engine in our RV (as was used in the original RV-14A prototype by Van’s) . The actual nomenclature for the engine is the Lycoming YIO-390-A3B6 Standard Experimental Engine (we also decided against the Thunderbolt version). As you can see from the chart above, our engine model’s price is going to increase a whopping $3,500....WHY? Apparently, on November 1, 2020 the engine automatically becomes $3,500 MORE awesome or some shit!
So, as the announcement states, we placed our engine order with Van’s PRIOR to November 1st to avoid paying the $3,500 price increase. The order required a 25% non-refundable down payment and I was able to “request” a delivery date of April 1, 2021. So, the engine has officially been ordered!!!
Here is the link the engine order form on the Van’s website.
At one point, we did debate installing the new IO-390-EXP119 engine announced by Van’s on July 22, 2020. However (as shown in the chart above), the EXP119’s price is $5,700 more than the original IO-390 (the engine we are purchasing).....yeah, that pretty much ended the debate. That money can definitely be spent elsewhere (we plan to use it for the airplane’s interior).
Here are a few pictures of the IO-390 I took at the Van’s booth at Sun-N-Fun a few years ago.
