By ANN Correspondent Pete Combs

When you think "diesel," you think 18-wheelers. Mercedes that seem to last forever. Generators. Airplanes.

Airplanes? Yup.

By the end of the year, Superior Air Parts hopes to have FAA certification for the Centurion TAE 125, a 135-hp diesel engine being retrofitted into Cessna 172s and Piper PA-28s. The Centurion is built by Thielert TAE, a manufacturer based in Lichtenstein, Germany, and is already certified by the JAA in Europe and the LBA in Germany.

"We anticipate FAA approval in the very near future," says Superior's Terry Wood, as AOPA Expo wrapped up Saturday afternoon.

The Centurion TAE 125 is a 1.7 liter engine that boasts a revolutionary engine management system. Forget fiddling with the mixture. No more complex prop controls.

This engine employs FADEC (Full Authority Digital Engine Control). It's all digital. And every time you go in for an oil change or any other sort of engine maintenance, the A&P downloads data from the engine's onboard computer and sends it off in an e-mail to the factory. "There's just one lever to control the engine," boasts Wood. "There are two CPUs in the engine for redundancy."

Wood predicts the TAE 125 will last a lot longer than the average 2000 hour time between overhauls for most normally aspirated aircraft prop engines. In fact, there is no TBO.

"There is a 2400 hour TBR," says Wood. That's "To Be Replaced." This $20,000 engine is, for all intents and purposes, disposable. Replacing it, Wood claims, is cheaper than overhauling a $23,000 Lycoming IO-360.

"People are starved for new technology," he says.

"Lycoming and Continental [the two biggest manufacturers of general aviation piston engines] are based on 1940s technology."

Superior claims there are other big-time advantages to this engine. The company says there are fewer emissions. Instead of running on 100LL, the only leaded gasoline still made in America, the TAE 125 runs on diesel fuel or Jet-A. "The 1.7 runs at 2300 rpm at cruise, versus 2800 rpm [sounds like a fast cruise to me --ed.] for normally-aspirated engines. There's less noise," says Wood.

As Aero-News reported last Summer, Diamond Aircraft is planning to offer Theilert diesels in its forthcoming new DA-42 Twinstar, as well as in its single-engine four-place aircraft.

FMI: www.superior-air-parts.com