Will.iam

I have had my surefly for little over 3 years and had put over 250 hours on it when it quit. Not a good reliability record. I had noticed an electrical noise on my radios about 6 months ago that when I did an in flight mag check and turned off the surefly the noise would go away. This got progressively worse to the point on some frequencies I would have to turn off the surefly just to understand ATC. Out of annual my A&P could not find anything wrong with spark plugs or spark plug wires or p-lead or ignition switch. After the surefly failed I sent it in and surefly inspected it and said they found an internal failure of their coil they had not seen before and that even though my surefly was out of warranty, they replaced it free of charge with a refurbished unit. I asked if the failure was heat induced as I put the surefly on the right side mag location as it is much harder to get to as there is the inter cooler next to it and I wondered if the heat from that had any effect, but surefly said they did not see any heat related issues with my unit. My unit was revision D and my refurbished unit is revision H. I test flew it today and then made a 2 hour trip with no issues except I do hear a faint more static noise on my radios when running on surefly compared to running on just the magneto. Because I had this issue I’m not sure if the slight noise was there on my original surefly when it was first installed as it is very faint but it is enough that I can tell the mag is more quiet on the radio than when running on the surefly. Here is to hoping this one goes for 2000 hours. So if you start getting loud radio noise from your surefly it might be an early indication of the unit is about to fail. As a question to other surefly users, do you hear any noise increase that you can tell when you turn off your surefly compared to when you turn off your mag? P.s. the electrical check surefly has you do with connecting a 9volt battery to the surefly passed both the timing led and the flash of the led for dip switch settings. They honestly thought it was not an issue with Bos itself and thought more of a power issue or grounding issue as it passed the LED test. They said you can send in the box but if there is nothing wrong with it they would charge a $200 service fee. So it was a risk to send it in but I felt like after verifying the box was getting 24volts at terminal and that the radio noise had stopped when the surefly quit working it was worth the gamble to me to send it in.

Yes you are correct. I miss that.

Interesting, I see 145kias at pattern alt 2k feet 160kias at 12,5k feet and 185kias at 22k feet all on the same 10.4 gallons per hour.

Also extremely important to make sure you have no air induction leaks. When I first got my gami injectors I did not realize I had a small induction leak on #3 cylinder and when I fixed that then my number #3 cylinder was outside .5 spread and I had to get a replacement gami injector. This was maddening as the air leak didn’t really show itself at low altitudes but the higher you go the more the turbo works and the bigger the pressure differential from ambient and that air leak would in fact make that cylinder richer which when flying lop would mean that cylinder would creep closer to peak as I would fly higher and thus the cht on the cylinder would rise up especially with the thinner air at higher altitude. So to save you some frustration make sure you have no upper deck air leaks before you send that data to gami. Garbage in gets you garbage out.

Also verify the short screw is in the plate hole that is closest to the boot as a normal length screw will contact the boot and start making a hole in it. The last time my cowl was off for repair the a&p was not careful and put the short screw in a different position and unfortunately put a long normal screw in there. I caught it the next time I was taking the cowl off and notice it had already started rubbing the boot. It’s now the fist thing I check when I go to pickup my Mooney after annual.

I read your logic on this before and is exactly why I went back to paper too since I lose no performance as the turbo has to work a little harder with the increased resistance but that is a small penalty compared to a compromise air that can have more dirt in it.

I have a surefly and replaced both wiring harnesses with new Maggie harnesses and tempest fine wire plugs. The surefly gets me .5 less fuel for same performance and I can go about 70 degrees lop before roughness. I’m at .2 spread on my gami injectors. The gami sweep at 65% unfortunately doesn’t magnify your spread as much as higher power setting will. And if you start at poh book values for 65% they were for ROP flying so as you sweep for your gami test the power will be less than 65%. Mike Busch talks about the big mixture pull which he does at wide open throttle so he is sweeping through peak at full power but is rapidly doing it and does not even know what LOP setting he is at because he doesn’t measure his lop he measures CHT values. He states from engine detonation testing in Ada OK that at the most destructive air fuel setting at full power they do not see detonation until the cht have climbed through 420 degrees so he knows even though he is leaning through the destructive zone because his cht’s are all below 380 he knows there is not detonation. Now if you go too slowly you will see your cht’s start rapidly rising but its not instantaneous and you do have seconds to get through it. My point is since my JPI records fuel flow and egt I did my gami sweep at 75% power and did it quickly then went back and downloaded the data to savvy aviation and used their gami spread chart to show that at 75% power it magnified my gami spread to greater than .5 so I was eligible for gami injectors which got me down to .2 my limitation is either cht 380 in the summer or 1585 tit which I hit in the winter at 31” 2300rpm 11.5 ff gets me 75% power lop but I routinely fly 10.2 which keeps my tit below 1550. I would not be so worried about the red box as much as what the Redbox will do to your cht’s which is push them rapidly past 380 and above 400 I would really be worried that detonation is about to. begin. It’s your cht’s that dictate how close you can run to the Redbox. If you want a good wiring harness spark plug test on your next run up go to 1800rpm then lean until you get the rpm’s to drop to 1700 THEN do a left and right mag check. My mag will drop 150 more rpm but will still run with all spark plugs firing my surefly only drops by 75 rpm a testament to the hotter longer spark. If you have a weak spark plug or wire or partial fouled plug you will feel it in roughness or egt dropping (or rising higher if you are so lop that the flame front so slow it’s still burning as the exhaust valve opens up cooking your egt prob) point is the offending wire / plug will be an outliner to the other plugs wires when you go back and look at your engine data to identify your weak point.

Only green when IMC no yellow red or purple. i will fly around it. If vfr i will avoid it visually even when wx is painting yellow as that is rain. If a wall of red or worse will land if too far to fly around or if i break out of imc before landing i will fly below avoiding down drafts of rain showers. One thing to keep in mind the lower you are 4000 ft or lower to agl the less updrafts there are so generally smoother flight but higher risk of downburst that could push you into the ground so not for big fully mature cells. Flying a caravan back in the day my worse rides were 5000 to 15000 feet as you are in the vertical up and down drafts which can tear a plane apart. And i only fly above a building cb if i can clear it by more than 3000ft so that leaves out 15k and bigger.

Geez none of y’all slide your seat all the way back? Not only does that help put cg aft and allows me to pickup a few knots but then my feet are right next to the floor heat vent which like other 252 pilots is scary hot at anything close to full open so i mix it with quite alot of cold air so that i don’t melt the plastic by the fuel selector.

I think the starter adapter and starter give indications before complete failure at least that was my experience. I had my plane for 6 months when i got the first starter adapter slip on starting. I was worried as i had mechanics tell me anything from replace it asap to wait until next annual. I chose the later and only had it slip 2 other times in the last 5 months to annual. 3 years later i started my plane flew it 30 mins to grandberry and when i went to start it again it would not start. This time it was the starter as i couldn’t hear the starter spin like i did with the worn starter adapter previously. A local mechanic took a rubber mallet and banged on the starter housing and that allowed me to start and fly home. As a precaution i took the upper cowl off and tapped the starter with a rubber mallet so that when i went to fly it next to my mechanic they could replace it which they are doing now as we speak. So even though both have stopped working reliably in the past they gave me enough warning to not be stuck AOG at an off station. Maybe i was lucky but i don’t lose sleep over when the new ones will start failing in the future.

Thanks for the info. Did you just twist it in its clamp to the other side to get it on the top side?

But isn’t the temp of exhaust leaving the turbo lower also because the pressure is lower on the exit side of the turbine than the entry point of the turbine and since gases cool as pressure drops i would think that would be more of the contributing factor as well as the turbo itself absorbing heat from the gases hitting the housing and impeller blades acting like a big heat sink too. I know some reference heat as doing the work but i always thought of it like pressure does the work since i can take compressed air that’s even cold and push it through the turbo and it would work but if i just had a oven heat on the intake and cold air on the exit, i don't think heat alone would be the driving factor.

I have tsio-360mb and that picture is not what my engine looks like. Fyi

Picked up frost on the bottom of my wing one day when the humidity was high and my fuel had soaked to sub freezing temperatures being in the FL’s for about an hour. Since i didn’t have any on the top of the wing and it was thin enough to see the paint through i didn’t have a problem with it as i knew adding fuel would melt it back off. If the frost was on the top i would have taken steps to remove it.

Actually when i first put in cam guard my starter adapter started slipping could have been coincidence, but I think my adapter was already worn out and that just accelerated the problem. Since i put the overhauled starter adapter i have continued to use cam guard and the adapter has not slipped since the overhaul.

Dougosh did mine the first annual i had my plane and it’s awesome. The difference in wind noise and drafts between when it’s inflated and not is amazing. If you take a piece of paper and put it on the seam of the closed door in flight and it sticks you have a draft between the door and cabin. I generally dump the air pressure on short final so that i do not forget and open the door after landing with the seal still inflated. It always amazes the passenger just how much loader the wind noise is with the seal deflated.

But why are the diesels to replacement and not overhaul? Why can’t you still use the crankshaft case etc?

Yea all that torque pulses doesn’t play well with propellors of today. Like a hammer, the vibrations would yet be another potential problem that needs testing to verify.

That is jpi proprietary information.

Caravan is boots. You wait until 10 Kias drop then activate the boots which sheds the ice but you only usually get 5 kias back so a losing battle and only buys you time to get out of it when more than trace.

I don’t have a Bravo but if @Fritz1 is running 100df ROP on 30”/2300 and 18.5ff i find it hard to believe you are LOP running only 29”/2400 at 19.5 ff as your setting is more rich than Fritz1 and he is already 100df ROP. What measurement are you using to determine you are running LOP?

$3.78 at KRFI just south of KGGG where Maxwell is at.

When the IRAN is about the same price as the surefly and i will not have to pay for another 2000 hours for that side, it’s a killer deal. That and i have the pressurized mag that surefly doesn’t require so if I’m at altitude and the pressure fails or the mag i have the surefly to fall back on.

Interesting my 252 idles at 650 RPM and smoothly at 700rpm. I have a long down grade to my hanger so i am idling at 700 or less for at least a few minutes after landing and i have not had my turbo leak after shutdown. With continental recommending running the engine at 700 for a 50 RPM rise check and not mentioning anything about idling at or above 1000 rpm before shutdown to scavenge oil out of the turbo. Just a data point that idling at less than a 1000 rpm prior to shutdown doesn’t mean the turbo will leak.

That’s all great except the airport was/is paid for with federal money. Your examples are all city or state not federal. Toll roads are for the new roads they build. I have yet to see a toll applied to an already developed federally funded road. So not the same comparison. And at least with the toll roads i can choose to use that new part of the road or stay on the free federal road. For an airport to charge for their funded part of the airport fine. But for them to charge for use of the federal part of the airport is nothing short of stealing and should be prosecuted at a federal offense. Like vandalizing mail boxes is a federal offense.