What about a diesel for the IV-P?

I have struggling to find an alternative for the Continental when the avgas will be banned in Europe soon.  I have looked into turbines, but the fuel consumption is too high and it gives you less than three hours of flying with the planning reserves we have to use here and the long distances between IFR airports.

I found this Centurion 4.0 eight cylinder jet fuel diesel engine (certified in Europe 10/28/04), 310 hp and about the same weight as the TSIO-550 www.centurion-engines.com/c40/c40_data.htm

They are targeting the engine for ?48,000 - about $65,000, very reasonable.

If you look into another project, that I have friend working certification on, and compare you should be able to reduce your Jet A1 consumption to around 10 gallons/hour www.hp-aircraft.com.

I am not an aerodynamically guy and I am not able to calculate performance, is there somebody out there able to help me see what performance an IV-P will have with this engine?

I can accept my IV-P with little less performance but with a solid engine for the future.

Lennart