Sbt..?
If they're using SBT parts, then $1200 is way too much. Just my personal experience... stay far away from SBT products, they're just not worth the savings in my opinion. The difference between the standard & premium engine packages is the warranty, the standard has a 1 year fault free warranty while the premium has a 2 year fault free warranty. I believe they are the same engine, you just pay extra for the additional year warranty. Your engine will run right now with no compression on 1 cylinder, albiet roughly, I wouldn't reccomend running it any more because you could do more damage. Here's some pics from one of our customers SBT experiences, the engine only had 3 hours total run time on it.
I'd like to put my opinion in here, if no one minds. I have used SBT for about 4 years now and have had no major problems with their product, outside a bent rave valve. I called in to the sales and they had me return and they sent another out.
I have installed 12 of their engines so far, mostly the 787 but a couple 717's too. I have had 0 engines returned for failure. I think it's understood in any market that you are going to have mistakes or failures. I often hear that there is a 10% margin of returns while we enjoy a 90% success rate. There are no numbers to support that fact but what I learned in college about any business that deals with the public.
I think SBT's reputation and business for the last ten years show's that they are a leader in remanafactured engines. They state on their home web page what their engines go through for the remanafacturing process. They state it is a 4 point process with either standard or first bore over. If you think you are getting second bore over (which the OEM standards do not permit the second bore over on the 787 because of rave valve clearance) on the 787, then you shoule take the head off and check the piston size. This would violate their terms of business and give you the option to seek ways of compensation.
As for the premium verses standard? Outside the warranty he mentioned above, they also send the complete gasket set, a bottle of break in oil (except for the RFI, DI models) and a calendar (which I have). At first, I only went with the standard engine but when I had to buy gasket kits, etc... I found the added extra bucks worth it to get the two year warranty.
The idea that you can run a 2 stroke Rotax engine on one piston is pretty unlikely. The torque from the pump would kill the other cylinder because it could not generate enough horsepower to run. You could run it on dry land, on a water hose.
With that scenerio, you've got a 50% loss of power. In the 4 strokes, I could see you running on 2 cylinders, roughly. But even then, it would have such a high loss of horsepower that you'd likely not be able to plane out.
That's just my opinion and experience. :cheers:
A broken rave valve won't get "spit out" the exhaust port, it lives in a cavity just above the exhaust port. When the valve breaks, usually at the shaft near the giloutine blade, it will take a little "ride" in the cylinder, bouncing off the piston, cylinder head a few times causing all kinds of damage (loss of compression, scorring cylinder walls, "peppering" the domes of the cylinder head) before the remaining pieces of what once was the rave valve get spit out. Sorry to hear about your problem, it sucks. Hopefully I was able to shed some light on some of the expense. Good luck.
