It is some time since our last news bulletin, so we thought it was time to update existing and potential customers about our future plans for D-Motor.
We will be continuing with production of the existing engine model and the launch of a proposed new version will be delayed by at least 2 years. This is to allow in-house development and testing to continue to ensure the engine will be fully reliable before any serial production starts.
As reported on 23 May 2017, one of the partners has left the company, which has obviously meant some re-organisation was necessary, but it has given us the opportunity to improve our systems and efficiency. The design has been frozen and the CAD and CNC libraries updated for all components.
We were manufacturing most components on CNC machines in our own factory although some parts were outsourced, such as camshaft manufacture, cylinder boring and Nikasil treatment / honing and valve seat installation. We have now decided to outsource the crankshaft and connecting rods to specialist companies in the UK. Line boring of the crankcase for crank and camshaft will also be outsourced.
Problems have been experienced during QC with a high rejection rate of the cast components caused by failures of the sand moulds. Working with our foundry company we have been running mould simulations to solve this problem and by the end of October we are confident that this issue will be eliminated.
In early 2017 we decided to stop serial production due to the casting problem, although sufficient parts were always held in stock to support any in-service engines. After customer feedback and comments at recent trade shows about the proposed new version we later decided to restart production of the existing model engine once the casting issue had been solved, but due to the re-organisation mentioned above this has taken much longer than we hoped.
Shortly we will be launching the first serial production batch of the 6 cylinderLF39 and a new serial production batch of the existing 4 cylinder LF26. As soon as these are available from stock we will re-start promotion and sales.
