Tom,

If I can get the new ranch house "finished" I will be there. I have always wanted to meet you and see that incredible 180 you own.

Jgreen

My T182T does 145 kts at 8000 ft on 12 gal/hr and 155 it's at 16kft at 13 gal/hr.
Not A36 speeds but it hold 7 hrs of fuel.

Considering my age and the times on my 180,, the engine will likely never be overhauled by me.

I have talked to umpteen people who have upgraded their engines on 180's and 182's or flown the converted airplanes. Speed increases will follow the same mathematical formula for most airplanes and will be "a little". The single biggest asset, seems to me, is that a P-Ponk, for instance, simply gives you 15% more power at altitude and offers a couple of thousand more feet of "usable" altitude.

I would think that if you lived in the high country, like Idaho, or flew there regularly, a bigger engine would be a huge asset. Scott can certainly comment on this if he's reading.

Here, in the Southeast, operating at nine or ten thousand in the summer gets you over a lot of bumpy buildups.

Jgreen

Tom N. and JGG: you guys are pure class!

That's what I figured, John. Seems that the PPonk is desired by those using high elevation strips. It's why I looked for one when I was shopping for a 182. Now, I just have to get up there to put it to work.

If you live in the midwest and don't require a P-Ponk'ed engine, look into the O-470 powered 180/182's and check mogas availability near you.

While the extra horses are nice, so are the advantages of having an aircraft burning mogas.

I think that if the plane has wheel pants and other speed mods, 150 KTAS is possible with a big-engine 182.

What about the io520 conversions claiming 160kt+ cruise speeds? Bogus?

I think the various speed mods can make a big difference.

Rodolfo,

Tom's comments on the speed mods seem to be closer to the truth than any other; not to say they all work or are worth the money. There used to be (or is) a "rule of thumb", that when you increased your horsepower by X %, your speed would increase by 1/3 of that. How accurate that is varies from airplane to airplane. Draggy airplanes seem to benefit less than clean ones. A great real world comparison is horsepower upgrades in Bonanza models and the Cessna 180/185. A Debonair has 225 HP and will cruise about 160 knots or so. A late model V-tail with 285 will add 10+ knots to that. A Cessna 180 has 230 HP, a 185 has 285. I've never seen or heard of a stock 185 that will best the cruise speed of a stock 180 by more than 4 knots.

On the other hand, Aubie and I know a 180 owner who has done a very effective clean up of his 180 and added the speed mods that seem to do the best job. Aubie has flown the airplane extensively and says that it is easily 12 knots faster than "stock" 180's which includes mine. And if you can't trust Aubie, who can you trust?

I think the best money is spent in making sure you have a "clean" airframe on a Cessna. Strut fairings, wing fairings, gear fairings, smaller beacons and antennas make a difference; my 180 needs them all. Making sure your airplane is properly rigged and control surfaces are aligned and free from hangar rash can almost transform a "dirty" airplane with no other expenditures.

Jgreen

Before I retired, I saw Charlie Sisk's 182 doing 150kts GS on radar a couple times. He has the Texas Skyways conversion.

Don,

I would assume that anyone spending that kind of money on horsepower made sure the airplane was "clean" and well rigged as well.

Day in and day out, a stock Skylane, either a legacy model or the newer Lycoming versions, (I've owned both) are 130-135 knot airplanes. My draggy 180 is about 4 knots faster than the '75 model Skylane I sold to a friend. When the 180 becomes my only airplane, I hope to have her cleaned up to give close to 150. Maybe that's optimistic , but a fellow can dream. With a P-Ponk upgrade I think that is possible, but that is also a lot of money for a few knots.

Jgreen

You're not going to get 160 knots true in a 182 with a 520.

Among the speed mods for the 182 that I have looked at - which is a whole lot of them - the one single mod that seems to have the most data support is cleaning up the nose gear drag. There are several mods that change the pant of the nose gear and enclose the strut and uniformly claim 5-8 knots. Folks that have such installations report before and after numbers that support that improvement.

I suspect that is accurate given the speeds seen from retractable 182s with the stock 235 Lycoming and the 180/185 variants. The stock 182 nose gear, right in the prop wash, is a lot of drag. Nothing else, at least in actual installed reports, seems to come close, absent a lot of power or the ability to get high to thin air.

RAS

Back in 2006, I purchased 3-182Q's from the CAP. All were 80 models with the same equipment within a few s/n's of each other, about the only difference was in color and one didn't have wheel pants. I took one to my house in AZ and brought the other two up here to AK.

The one thing I remember that took me by surprise was the one without wheel pants was a knot or two faster than the one with wheel pants... Go figure.

As a side note, in the same bid I also had purchased a couple P model 172's with the Airplanes 180hp conversion. Flown together at the same speed, about 125kts, the 182 burns 1.5 gph more than the 172.
Jeff