Ryan ORL

This sure is a cynical group. Personally, I would rather have expensive-but-available Mooney parts than cheap-but-unavailable parts. I only rarely need actual Mooney parts but when I do need them, it's usually something standing between me and actually using my airplane.

Of course, not giving the mag remnants to anyone until we settle on whats going on. It's also not out of the question the FAA will want to see them.

Small update... Western Skyways has my engine and has started disassembly. Hopefully more news there soon. I met in person here in Orlando w/ the rep from Champion so he could inspect the impulse coupling debris in person and photograph it. He was obviously pretty circumspect in his commentary but did say that while they have seen impulse failures of this type, he has never seen them with this low time and insinuated that they don't trust QAA/Hartzell's claim that these were new couplings. They want me to send them the parts for analysis in their lab. Getting another look at the coupling myself, it is clear as day that the rivet holes are very worn out, they're oversized and elongated enough to be obvious to the naked eye. I think even if I were to accept that these were "used" couplings, the chances of the identical failure in <100 hours is simply too improbably to consider. Probably even an unmaintained and uninspected coupling should be expected to carry on well beyond 500 hours before this sort of failure would occur. I also separately received a call from Certified Engines, my original engine shop, saying that they finally settled up with QAA/Hartzell on the previous mag explosion (QAA paid them) and they told me they were informed by QAA that they would be paying for this one as well. I don't have that in writing from them yet though. I haven't sent the mag parts to anyone yet because I want QAA/Hartzell to give me their view on what they want to occur now. The most direct warranty claim is through them, however I certainly understand their point of view that this is not 'their' failure (if these were indeed new couplings), which is obviously why they wanted me to involve Champion. From my point of view, the cleanest solution is that QAA/Hartzell agrees to cover the teardown expenses, takes possession of this mag (and the previous which they now paid for), and pursues one consolidated claim against Champion. Then they can decide under what circumstances they release these parts to Champion, and I am no longer in the middle. Still no firm agreement from the parties though... and I do periodically see email traffic back and forth, so I know they are communicating behind the scenes now.

Just extrapolating from what I know of modern car engine design, I suspect more modern cylinder head (combustion chamber) design could buy a bit of extra detonation resistance versus our older designs. The obvious improvement though would be a full modern EFI system. Without the stupid fixed spark timing and uneven fuel delivery, you could effectively eliminate “the red box” entirely. Easy enough to electronically pull timing when cylinder temperatures get high, or when lugging the engine at lower RPMs. For getting a lot out of lower octane fuel, though, I think the really difficult thing is the air cooling requirement and the vast operating temperature range that implies. Water cooling an engine really helps avoid hot spots and even the design of that matters a lot… Chevy squeezed a bit more out of the SBC (and was able to up the compression ratio) when they went to reverse cooling (heads first), although they later abandoned that for other reasons.

It was at WestJet RAP in the MX hangar there, but I suppose it's possible they've moved it while they wait. I'm unfortunately back in Orlando so can't keep an eye on it directly.

I got the impression it was the latter.

The Mooney certificate. There was some discussion of how to specifically structure the deal so as not to invalidate the certificate. I didn't understand (and so don't remember) the specifics of how that works, but they were pretty clear that being able to do stuff under that certificate was the whole goal.

They had some delays sending me the empty crate so they haven't gotten it yet... hopefully next week!

Yeah, my interim plan of having a "brand new Champion Slick mag" to avoid the QAA issues is not such a slam dunk at this point. Doing SureFly as soon as possible.

My recollection of what the LASAR rep said at Mooney Summit last weekend suggested that they would at least be heavily involved in replacement parts manufacturing in Kerrville. His specific example was the nose gear trusses... right now apparently the tubular segments are hand-cut and ground to the proper length. He said they were working on setting that up to be laser cut so they could produce "1000" in the same time as one currently takes. So that sounds to me like they think they'll be producing parts at the Mooney factory and presumably under the Mooney certificate. He mentioned that they were very careful to structure the deal to be able to be under their certificate somehow.

Some interesting updates to share, and the mystery deepens... I received a call from the Director of Product Support at Hartzell, which apparently owns QAA. He was aware of my prior case and had inspected that magneto at my old engine shop. He just learned about this latest case from my emails to my old engine shop, which they forwarded to him. He informed me that it is their opinion that there is nothing wrong with my engine or anything else related to my operation or the installation. He said QAA overhauled magnetos do not have 'overhauled' impulse couplings, but rather they always replace the impulse coupling with brand new OEM Champion impulse couplings. He encouraged me strongly to file a SDR with the FAA and to attempt to open a case w/ Champion directly, and that they would help any way they could from their end. He also suggested they were aware of a few similar cases, but this is the only known case of two failures consecutively. I got in contact w/ Champion's Quality department and promptly received a call from their Director of Engineering for the Piston stuff. He didn't really give me any new information but said he wanted to inspect the magneto in person while he is in Orlando next week. (I am having the magneto parts shipped to me) QAA apparently will also be sending a representative to be present. I also filed the SDR w/ the FAA... we'll see if there's any followup there. I think the Hartzell guy was going to make some FAA contacts aware of it. So obviously if it is in fact the case that these were brand new Champion couplings, that's pretty concerning.

I think it could be quite a concern with this fuel, however. From what I've read about it thus far, its MON is lower than 100LL and G100UL (neither of which are actually 100 in reality, but higher), which would significantly reduce detonation margins in my engine (IO-360-A3B6) for example. Whereas previously detonation might only occur >25" MAP and at certain temperatures, it is very easy to imagine it occurring at previously-conservative values.

Thanks guys! That seems to be the most straightforward solution then... switch to the hall effect sensor for the G3X and ditch the P-lead pickups entirely (except for the R1). I think with that setup, there's no need for the Tach2.

Hey everyone! I have a G3X Touch + 4 cylinder EIS in my J. Before I had my panel installed, when I bought my airplane, it had a EI R1 Electric Tach in place of the factory tach. I also had an old Insight G4. When we installed the G3X, I elected to retain the old EI R1 tach as a backup, since in case of G3X PFD failure, I have no other source of tach info. This setup seems to work fine. I also happen to know, because of some other recent avionics debugging, that my G3X is configured to use P-lead inputs for tach sensing. (In this case, my G3X RPM would read zero on the left mag only, and the problem was a bad connection at the resistor which is right at the P-lead) Because of my recent (very costly) magneto/impulse coupling issues, I plan on switching my left (impulse) magneto to a SureFly EIS. I would like to keep the same setup, however, with the G3X and the EI R1 continuing to work as before. I've been doing some research on whether I can keep this setup and it seems that I should be able to (there a small capacitor needed for the R1 apparently)... but I am trying to figure out whether I will need the Tach2 box or not. Based on the G3X Installation Manual, I believe it should be possible to have a magnetic pickup installed in only one magneto and that should not require any P-lead sensing. I am not sure why mine wasn't setup this way. In this case, I think I could just have this setup in the right (conventional) magneto, and I would not need any Tach2 box from SureFly. Does anyone know if the G3X + EIS STC requires the dual P-lead setup, or did my avionics shop just choose that for convenience? Only requiring a single tach input that is not dependent on the P-leads being ungrounded seems simpler to me.

I have the Slick start unit also, and a Skytec starter… not sure whether it turns over that fast, never considered it. Anyway, the Slick start is great for hot starts… I do wonder if it’s somehow involved, in that you can get the engine to start catching when ordinarily it wouldn’t (and therefore you can have the impulse engaged, then unengaged, then engaged again in succession if it’s a bit unstable before it finally gets going fully)