A Cessna 172 seats 4 people and has 160 hp.

A Lancair Evolution seats 4 people and has 750 hp, and can fly at the exact same weight.

Obviously, we have a real dis-continuity here.

And obviously I have the solution to this disconnect:

850 hp!

Much better!

This is the Pratt and Whitney PT6A-42, which has dual-compressors and a bigger gearbox and a longer body for not only 100 more horsepower, but the ability to SUSTAIN that power up to higher altitudes. In fact, this bigger engine uses even LESS fuel than the standard PT6A-135 because the -42 has the dual compressors for increased efficiency! Of course this engine WEIGHS a little more than the standard engine, but we offset that by going to a feather-weight composite German propeller, which is much lighter than the standard American METAL one! The lighter-weight prop largely offsets the weight-gain from the engine, and we wind up with more power from the bigger engine, more efficiency from the dual compressors, MUCH more power available at high altitude for the two reasons just stated, and, as a result: SPEED.

OOOOO... I want to RACE people! RACE! RACE!! RACE!!!

OK now to install the PT6A-42, which is as visually-appealing as 2 metal trash-cans, but delivers the goods by handing out 850 hp from a 400-pound package.

The install: This part is sort of laughably easy. Just bolt the engine mount in place with 4 bolts. Yawn.

OK and some lower bolts as well. Lucky for me someone else made the engine and mount and firewall... so all I have to do is bolt them together, which is sort of embarrasingly easy.

I already forgot what I was doing there, but it involved tightening a bolt.

Now we attach the baffles inside the engine bay. This keeps air or debris from migrating from one part of the engine bay to another. The bottom line is that we want carefully-controlled flow of air from the cowl inlet to the air intake of the engine itself.. and these baffles help manage that. As well, they isolate the engine air intake from the rest of the cowl, so if any parts come loose from the engine, they do not find their way into the air intake, thus getting ingested by the engine! (this would destroy the turbines, and cost me $500,000 in an eye-blink... quite a bit scary) Again, if one bolt or nut comes loose, even from the bafflings, and winds up getting sucked into the engine air intake, it could destroy the engine. And you see the cost of the engine above. If you had half a million dollars riding on a bolt being tight, how many times would you check the tightness?

And now getting the baffling perfectly in place...

Anmd adding little nuts and bolts to hold them all together, whose tightness shall be checked many times by many people.

Working so fast that I am a blurr! But this work is super-easy.

When done: 850 hp instead of 750 hp, behind a low-drag cowl, hooked to a light-weight prop to offset the weight gain of the bigger, stronger, more fuel-efficient engine.

I don't know how fast it will go. But X-Plane says 350 mph.