OK, I thought you talked about making my engine over-heat and seize if I didn't twiddle radiator flaps right. That would be really annoying. If it doesn't inconvenience me or give you a noticeable advantage, then fine.
If you make the difference minor enough that I couldn't tell one way or another flying against you. If I can tell it is giving you a noticeable advantage, then that is the same as punishing those that don't want to be flight sim accountants. So yeah, 1 or 2 ft/s if that floats your boat.
Now whether that is worth touching that much coad is another question. Risk&effort vs reward. I doubt adding radiator flaps would put another 100 players in to the arena.
This is the implementation I would use:
1) It would be an option like Stall Limiter and Engine Governor.
2) Turned off, things function more or less like normal. The game automatically manages cowl flaps, mixture, etc.
3) Turned on, the player now manages those functions based on the aircraft's capabilities (IE, Corsairs can set fuel to Auto Lean or Auto Rich, but have to manually adjust prop speed, cowl and oil cooler flaps, and change the supercharger speed. Whereas FW-190s don't have to worry about propeller pitch since it's all automatic). Obviously some difference would need to be determined between aircraft with automatic controls, and the game managing it for the player. And one possibility is that aircraft that actually have automatic controls would supersede the "EZ Engine" setting (so fly a 190, and your propeller is managed by the aircraft. Fly a Spitfire and the game's auto controls manage it). Perhaps similar to how combat trim is more general and unable to account for things like flaps than trimming manually; so "EZ Engine" sets everything in a "good enough" range, but the aircraft's automatic settings are more precise.
4) Manual settings (where available) allow squeezing a bit of extra performance out of the aircraft. Maybe 3-5mph if you shut your flaps, or a few extra FPM on your rate of climb by tweaking your propeller pitch, etc.
5) I propose adding engine overheats as part of the risk/reward to manual settings. Players with CEM disabled generally wouldn't need to worry about it (unless they do something silly like WEP from takeoff to landing). But with manual settings, pushing too much (IE prop speed too high, fuel too rich or lean, etc.) or for too long risks burning out the engine (the time, however, should be reasonable. Il-2 seriously overmodels engine overheats) It would be similar to how the Engine Governor already works in WWI: You can leave it on and never have to worry about your engine blowing up from over-revving. However when off you can take the risk for a bit extra performance at high speeds and in dives.
You shove off with your nuisance wishes. (If you don't like feedback don't post on a DISCUSSION board.)
You're not discussing. You hit "Engine Management" and slammed on the brakes and summarily dismissed the entire post. I've seen plenty of people on this board ask for CEM in the past, so it ain't on you to declare what is or is not a "nuisance wish."
You want an advantage because of self-induced difficulty. That's grinding.
Flying over and over and over again in a low-ENY plane to rack up perk points is grinding. Spending hours wandering around killing Kobolds and Spiders even though you're ten levels above them for easy XP and Gold is grinding.