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Remarkably Bad experience with Avionics shop


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Hey folks, hope no one has any advice on how to handle this because I hope none of you have gone through it.

 

Airplane has been down since February, went in for a landing light switch and came out with a nightmare.

 

Should have thrown a red flag when they charged $550 in labor for the landing light switch install.

 

They offered to move up my shop date for ADSB install GTX345 and I took them up on it. On the flight down my old king digital HSI was blurring in and out of focus. I figured I would do the g5 with GadB and magnetometer as a stepping stone to doing the G500 Txi down the road and I could have more confidence in pursuing instrument rating without wondering when the old digital HSI was going to blink out of existence.

 

They seemed to think this was a non issue and alotted for about a week for the initial install.

 

They then quoted me with dual G5’s to replace the KI 256 and I took them up on it, which was unfortunate since had I spent another 10 minutes on the forum I may have discovered on my own that this wasn’t going to work.

 

 

They proceeded to promise week after week the airplane would be done.

 

Finally we go for a test flight yesterday (long awaited since I landed in February)

 

Of corse most of you probably already have guessed, the KFC150 needs the KI256. So now I don’t have an autopilot that functions.

 

They have offered to eat the labor on putting the old unit back in and buying the G5 back

(Which I cant believe even needed said)

 

But where do we go from here? They get it back functioning but all of this has been borderline criminal with the lack of knowledge of anything except how to make a big bill get bigger. I’ve already paid $8200 which would be half of the parts only with ADSB equipment and HSI . Any advice on how to handle the bill appreciated

 

 

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42 minutes ago, blakealbers said:

 

Hey folks, hope no one has any advice on how to handle this because I hope none of you have gone through it.

 

Airplane has been down since February, went in for a landing light switch and came out with a nightmare.

 

Should have thrown a red flag when they charged $550 in labor for the landing light switch install.

 

They offered to move up my shop date for ADSB install GTX345 and I took them up on it. On the flight down my old king digital HSI was blurring in and out of focus. I figured I would do the g5 with GadB and magnetometer as a stepping stone to doing the G500 Txi down the road and I could have more confidence in pursuing instrument rating without wondering when the old digital HSI was going to blink out of existence.

 

They seemed to think this was a non issue and alotted for about a week for the initial install.

 

They then quoted me with dual G5’s to replace the KI 256 and I took them up on it, which was unfortunate since had I spent another 10 minutes on the forum I may have discovered on my own that this wasn’t going to work.

 

 

They proceeded to promise week after week the airplane would be done.

 

Finally we go for a test flight yesterday (long awaited since I landed in February)

 

Of corse most of you probably already have guessed, the KFC150 needs the KI256. So now I don’t have an autopilot that functions.

 

They have offered to eat the labor on putting the old unit back in and buying the G5 back

(Which I cant believe even needed said)

 

But where do we go from here? They get it back functioning but all of this has been borderline criminal with the lack of knowledge of anything except how to make a big bill get bigger. I’ve already paid $8200 which would be half of the parts only with ADSB equipment and HSI . Any advice on how to handle the bill appreciated

 

 

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Oh my goodness, any shop that didn't realize that the G5 isn't going to replace the KI-256 on a King Autopilot shouldn't be allowed to touch your airplane ever again. How exactly did they wire it thinking it would work? Nowhere in the install manual could they possibly find an application for the G5 to replace an attitude indicator in a King Autopilot.

Are they a Garmin dealer? I'm guessing no.  

This is not something you want to hear, but you have to know exactly what you want before you ever let a shop start. You have to educate yourself on what is and what is not compatible with what you have in the airplane. I know  . .  that's supposed to be their job, but this would never have gotten to this point if you would have gone in their forearmed. That's what Mooneyspace is great for - post your thoughts and you will get responses. We all keep each other in check.

Hopefully they didn't remove your vacuum system and backup.

Please post the name of the shop so none of us go there.

Regarding the bill - my thinking is that you owe them for the G5 HSI and labor. You don't say what your ADSB solution was, but you owe for parts and labor there. The only thing you don't owe for would be the time installing and removing the G5 Attitude Indicator and the G5 Attitude Indicator itself. However it sounds like you might have supplied your own G5's.

Yes,  the bill will be much more than it should have been and yes, you lost the use of your airplane for months - all of this is considered tuition for the education you received. :)

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Oh my goodness, any shop that didn't realize that the G5 isn't going to replace the KI-256 on a King Autopilot shouldn't be allowed to touch your airplane ever again. How exactly did they wire it thinking it would work? Nowhere in the install manual could they possibly find an application for the G5 to replace an attitude indicator in a King Autopilot.
Are they a Garmin dealer? I'm guessing no.  
This is not something you want to hear, but you have to know exactly what you want before you ever let a shop start. You have to educate yourself on what is and what is not compatible with what you have in the airplane. I know  . .  that's supposed to be their job, but this would never have gotten to this point if you would have gone in their forearmed. That's what Mooneyspace is great for - post your thoughts and you will get responses. We all keep each other in check.
Hopefully they didn't remove your vacuum system and backup.
Please post the name of the shop so none of us go there.
Regarding the bill - my thinking is that you owe them for the G5 HSI and labor. You don't say what your ADSB solution was, but you owe for parts and labor there. The only thing you don't owe for would be the time installing and removing the G5 Attitude Indicator and the G5 Attitude Indicator itself. However it sounds like you might have supplied your own G5's.
Yes,  the bill will be much more than it should have been and yes, you lost the use of your airplane for months - all of this is considered tuition for the education you received. 



Silverhawk @ LNK, they are a garmin dealer. Lots of bad stories lately. I actually thought I had spent a decent amount of time on here and I just kept reading flight director and lack there of on the G5 so when they said they could do it I assumed that we were just losing the command bars, not autopilot functionality. But yes, should have done more due diligence. Certainly won’t happen again


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I have a somewhat similar story but not to the degree. A couple months back, I installed an engine monitor and once it was installed, there were some minor issues with it so i planned to get it fixed. in between picking up the plane on the finishing date, and going back to the shop to fix the minor issues, 52Q had to have his annual done. During this annual we found out that the EDM900 hadn't been installed exactly to the spec the manual stated and it needed a decent chunk of work to fix it. all in, we spent about 1500 bucks fixing all the issues with the EDM. some issues such as, NO AMP READING, Probes not crimped properly, fuel tanks not even close to properly calibrated, fuel flow transducer was leaking fuel during the flights, and mounted completely wrong, and a couple other issues. Overall I'm glad Foothill fixed all the issues with the EDM. I didn't bother following up with the original shop that installed it because I didn't really want them touching anything on the plane.

If i were you, I would definitely not let them touch the airplane anymore. They've made it very clear that they don't know what they're doing. my guess is that if you had 2 G5's installed and a gtx345, that ramped up a nice bill somewhere around 15 to 20k. figure out a deal with the shop and keep them away from your aircraft. I would definitely be expecting a discounted price at least.

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I would do two things:

1) Tell Garmin that this dealer needs more training

2) Negotiate a smoking hot deal on a G500Txi with a GAD43e to interface to you kFC500.  Especially if your vacuum system has been removed.

Aerodon

 

 

 

 

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Just now, Aerodon said:

I would do two things:

1) Tell Garmin that this dealer needs more training

2) Negotiate a smoking hot deal on a G500Txi with a GAD43e to interface to you kFC500.  Especially if your vacuum system has been removed.

Aerodon

 

 

 

 

I don't think I'd allow a shop to touch my airplane if they installed a G5, and didn't even realize that the autopilot wasn't working. they should know that the G5 AI and KFC isn't compatible, but the fact that they were able to deliver the aircraft without knowing that the AP wasnt working would make me somewhat reluctant to have them as my avionics shop.

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Oh my goodness, any shop that didn't realize that the G5 isn't going to replace the KI-256 on a King Autopilot shouldn't be allowed to touch your airplane ever again. How exactly did they wire it thinking it would work? Nowhere in the install manual could they possibly find an application for the G5 to replace an attitude indicator in a King Autopilot.
Are they a Garmin dealer? I'm guessing no.  
This is not something you want to hear, but you have to know exactly what you want before you ever let a shop start. You have to educate yourself on what is and what is not compatible with what you have in the airplane. I know  . .  that's supposed to be their job, but this would never have gotten to this point if you would have gone in their forearmed. That's what Mooneyspace is great for - post your thoughts and you will get responses. We all keep each other in check.
Hopefully they didn't remove your vacuum system and backup.
Please post the name of the shop so none of us go there.
Regarding the bill - my thinking is that you owe them for the G5 HSI and labor. You don't say what your ADSB solution was, but you owe for parts and labor there. The only thing you don't owe for would be the time installing and removing the G5 Attitude Indicator and the G5 Attitude Indicator itself. However it sounds like you might have supplied your own G5's.
Yes,  the bill will be much more than it should have been and yes, you lost the use of your airplane for months - all of this is considered tuition for the education you received. 


29k with LED lights they said were necessary to pass EMI standards for new magnetometer


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7 minutes ago, blakealbers said:

 


29k with LED lights they said were necessary to pass EMI standards for new magnetometer


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What a fucking ripoff. Geez

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4 minutes ago, blakealbers said:


Kind of my thoughts, especially considering the downtime and rudeness.


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Their quote seems about 13k too expensive.

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2 hours ago, blakealbers said:

 

Hey folks, hope no one has any advice on how to handle this because I hope none of you have gone through it.

 

Airplane has been down since February, went in for a landing light switch and came out with a nightmare.

 

Should have thrown a red flag when they charged $550 in labor for the landing light switch install.

 

They offered to move up my shop date for ADSB install GTX345 and I took them up on it. On the flight down my old king digital HSI was blurring in and out of focus. I figured I would do the g5 with GadB and magnetometer as a stepping stone to doing the G500 Txi down the road and I could have more confidence in pursuing instrument rating without wondering when the old digital HSI was going to blink out of existence.

 

They seemed to think this was a non issue and alotted for about a week for the initial install.

 

They then quoted me with dual G5’s to replace the KI 256 and I took them up on it, which was unfortunate since had I spent another 10 minutes on the forum I may have discovered on my own that this wasn’t going to work.

 

 

They proceeded to promise week after week the airplane would be done.

 

Finally we go for a test flight yesterday (long awaited since I landed in February)

 

Of corse most of you probably already have guessed, the KFC150 needs the KI256. So now I don’t have an autopilot that functions.

 

They have offered to eat the labor on putting the old unit back in and buying the G5 back

(Which I cant believe even needed said)

 

But where do we go from here? They get it back functioning but all of this has been borderline criminal with the lack of knowledge of anything except how to make a big bill get bigger. I’ve already paid $8200 which would be half of the parts only with ADSB equipment and HSI . Any advice on how to handle the bill appreciated

 

 

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Sorry for your pain. Avionics shops seem to have much more work than they can handle at the moment. Lack of attention to critical detail may be a symptom of a market in their favor, as is the very slow pace of the work you wanted completed.  Sadly in this type of market, you may not have much leverage - extract the best deal you can that will leave you with a working autopilot and not further delay your getting use of your plane back. 

But even in times when the market is not skewed so far in favor of the shop, it pays to be politely hyper-attentive to every detail of the work you want done.  It seems just about every aircraft owner learns this the hard way at some point.  I sure did.  

 

 

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Wow... I got the GTX-345 installed last year and installation took less than a week. I posted the GTX-345's installation labor cost on MS somewhere. I also just recently installed a G5 AI in the place of my T&B coordinator and multiple shops made sure that I knew that the G5 could not replace a KI-256. I had already read the STC but they confirmed what I already knew because of research on MS and other sources. I chose to install the G5 AI because I still wanted a full featured AI in lieu of a turn coordinator during vacuum pump failure.

Best of luck with getting the installer to correct your issues. Personally, I would not let them off the hook until you have a fully functioning autopilot. The autopilot is the most expensive component of your airplane and the installer should've known better than to disable / make it inoperative. They may have even violated the STC by removing the KI-256, unless you authorized it's removal knowing it would make the autopilot inoperative. 

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OMG! I feel for you. But let me second what @LANCECASPER said. No one should ever go into any shop for an upgrade without knowing as much or more than the shop knows. In this day and age with everything available on the Internet, there is no reason not to know. And when spending $20 to $100 AMU's, it's worth the time to educate ones self. Back in 2014 I knew nothing about Mooneys much less what went in a Mooney panel. Today, I know as much or more about the options for Mooney panels than any avionics shop in the country. And everyone can have the same information for free. 

When I take my Mooney in for avionics upgrades, I call the shots and say what will be done. And when an avionics shop disagrees with me, I find another shop. After all, I know better than they do. It's the only way to operate in this business. 

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1 hour ago, gsxrpilot said:

When I take my Mooney in for avionics upgrades, I call the shots and say what will be done. And when an avionics shop disagrees with me, I find another shop. After all, I know better than they do. It's the only way to operate in this business. 

That's not always easy either.  The last time I tried to call the shot, the A&P quitted in the middle of a job and told me in no uncertain terms that the aircraft owner's job is to pay whatever the A&P ask without question.  

Edited by corn_flake
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16 minutes ago, corn_flake said:

That's not always easy either.  The last time I tried to call the shot, the A&P quitted in the middle of a job and told me in no certain terms that the aircraft owner's job is to pay whatever A&P ask without question.  

True. But that requires building a relationship with the shop before handing over the plane. I took my 252 to three different avionics shops before settling on one. I also got opinions from my AI with whom I have a great relationship built over years and trust explicitly. It was pretty obvious that the shop I settled on thought the same way I did about the work that needed to be done. 

Obviously shit happens. But my Mooney doesn't go into any shop without a very clear understanding of the expectations, business practices, and agreements in writing about how it will all go down.

I did have one situation where my plane was in the shop and the owner and I came to a disagreement over the way forward. I showed up at the shop, paid the bill to that point, and took possession of the plane. I reinstalled pieces that were disassembled, and flew the plane out. The shop owner told me the plane was not airworthy and couldn't be moved. I said I wasn't asking for his opinion and flew the plane away to another shop. That was a couple of years ago. It was a good lesson to learn. Keep control of the situation. Check in often. Show up and inspect the progress. And at the end of the day, I'm PIC and I'm the owner. I determine if I can fly the plane or not.

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Wow.  Now I feel much, much better about my own avionics shop from hell.  At least everything the guy put in works, even if the boxes don't talk to each other that well.  

All due respect to Paul, but there are a lot of boxes out there and a lot to know.  I already have a job that requires a lot of knowledge. I really don't feel like becoming an avionics tech.  The reason I hire a someone else to do this is he doesn't get paid as much as I do.  Moreover, the guy has oodles of specialized knowledge that I lack.  That's why we hire these things out.  Sounds like its getting harder and harder to find a good shop though.

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Perhaps some sort of a zero to five star avionics  shop rating on Mooney space would be most helpful to prevent some of these horrors.

As George Foreman once  said about his aberrant youth, "If you don't know you don't know."

My experience is three fold and has never been good. First, wiring harness improperly secured, controls tensioning and AI declared aircraft not airworthy. Second incident,

shop caught in a blatant lie, had just got off phone with Garmin techs so caught him red handed. Third incident, ready for major Garmin upgrade, six phone calls to shop with no response at all.

So, if someone would be interested in starting an Avionics Ratings  Blog, I would be glad to enter three zero star shops to get it going.

I am sure there are some five star shops out there in the ether,  somewhere.

Any help in finding them would be most appreciated.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I am wondering if the crunch for ADS-B installations means the avionics industry is putting minimally trained techs to work just to keep up with the work load.  I agree with Paul that we have to know as much as reasonably possible about what needs to be done on an avionics install.  Having said that, at some point the work is turned over to someone with tools in hand to perform surgery on our aircraft.  A lot of what has been posted in this thread sounds like really poor quality control that may be the result of a minimally trained, inexperienced technician trying to meet a deadline.

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7 minutes ago, whiskytango said:

I am wondering if the crunch for ADS-B installations means the avionics industry is putting minimally trained techs to work just to keep up with the work load.  I agree with Paul that we have to know as much as reasonably possible about what needs to be done on an avionics install.  Having said that, at some point the work is turned over to someone with tools in hand to perform surgery on our aircraft.  A lot of what has been posted in this thread sounds like really poor quality control that may be the result of a minimally trained, inexperienced technician trying to meet a deadline.

I agree completely but feel in this case it was a failure from the top down. 

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I have not found the perfect avionics shop, but I have several I trust enough to work on my plane. My problems have been with shops overestimating their production capacity (3 weeks turns into 2 months) but everything works when it comes out, and we all agreed up front what would be done and what the cost would be. Even when there is the "how much to add X" in the middle of the install, my on-field shop will give a written quote before proceeding and will update me on a regular basis as to progress and problems.

I agree with @gsxrpilot about having to know what you want and how/if it can work together before going into the shop with a checkbook. Between MS and Google, while you may not know everything about every piece of avionics gear out there, you can do some in-depth research on what you are looking at for your own panel.

As a sidebar, I want to thank @M20Doc, @Marauder, @gsxrpilot, and all the other folks on MS who share their wisdom on this site on a regular basis - too many to name individually. The knowledge available on this forum has helped me make some good decisions and avoid a couple of really bad and expensive ones.

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8 hours ago, corn_flake said:

That's not always easy either.  The last time I tried to call the shot, the A&P quitted in the middle of a job and told me in no uncertain terms that the aircraft owner's job is to pay whatever the A&P ask without question.  

he saved you the hassle of firing him!

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1 hour ago, steingar said:

Wow.  Now I feel much, much better about my own avionics shop from hell.  At least everything the guy put in works, even if the boxes don't talk to each other that well.  

All due respect to Paul, but there are a lot of boxes out there and a lot to know.  I already have a job that requires a lot of knowledge. I really don't feel like becoming an avionics tech.  The reason I hire a someone else to do this is he doesn't get paid as much as I do.  Moreover, the guy has oodles of specialized knowledge that I lack.  That's why we hire these things out.  Sounds like its getting harder and harder to find a good shop though.

you do not have to know the ins and outs of how to install the equipment, just the knowledge of what works with what and what you want it to do. by talking to several shops and here on Mooneyspace you can set your expectations before dropping off the plane.

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37 minutes ago, orionflt said:

you do not have to know the ins and outs of how to install the equipment, just the knowledge of what works with what and what you want it to do. by talking to several shops and here on Mooneyspace you can set your expectations before dropping off the plane.

This is what I meant. I'm paying an avionics shop to know how to run wires, solder joints and know what connectors to use, and to sign my log book. But I chose the components and their arrangement in the panel. @steingar is correct that there is a lot to know about a lot of boxes. But I'm just not confident there is any avionics shop out there that knows all that data either. They're too busy running wires and doing installs to read all the marketing material, user guides, etc. And the manufacturer reps are obviously biased. In fact I've found avionics shops to be biased towards what is easiest to install and what has the best margin for them. But since I'm the guy who's gonna spend all the hours with my nose just inches from this panel, I want it to be right and no one has more of a vested interest in that than me.

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