Garmin G5 Battery Recall

[PT20J]

Garmin just announced a big recall on G5s. Some apparently have the nasty tendency to run the batteries down when powered off. Evidently Garmin finally tracked it to some bad batch. https://www.garmin.com/en-US/aviationalerts/service-bulletin-22013-g5-backup-battery-discharge/

Skip

[hammdo]

Whew, both of mine are newer units in the 44000-50000 range...

-Don

[EricJ]

I'm in luck;  my old one is an earlier S/N and my new one is past the affected S/Ns, so mine aren't affected.   I do notice, though, that on shutdown my old one usually indicates 99-100% battery and my new one typically indicates about 94-96%.   I don't think I've ever seen the new one at 100%.

[PT20J]

38 minutes ago, EricJ said:

I'm in luck;  my old one is an earlier S/N and my new one is past the affected S/Ns, so mine aren't affected.   I do notice, though, that on shutdown my old one usually indicates 99-100% battery and my new one typically indicates about 94-96%.   I don't think I've ever seen the new one at 100%.

Mine, installed in September 2021 does the same as your second one. My battery usually shows between 93 and 98%. It may be just the uncertainty in the method of measuring battery capacity. Garmin has made a number of software and battery changes -- probably trying to figure out the problem -- which also may have affected the capacity measurement. There is another G5 weirdness that some have reported and I experienced once. Somehow it is seems possible to get the G5 in a mode where it appears shut down but is still draining the battery. The next time you power it up it won't come on. Holding down the power button for a long time (maybe 20 seconds) causes some internal reset and it works again but has to charge up the battery. It happened to me when I was testing stuff on ground power and turning avionics on and off a lot. I don't know exactly what I did to cause it and I have never been able to repeat it. But some on Beechtalk have reported it and I know of an instance at a flight school where it happened.

Skip

[Ragsf15e]

Wowza, I got lucky on that one!  Mine were installed 2/14/2020 and they aren't affected... or at least they're not in that batch of serial numbers.  I haven't had any issues with the batteries either.

[Ulysse]

18 hours ago, hammdo said:

mine are newer units in the 44000

Mine too, yet the battery died because the plane was not used for about a month and it would not charge anymore. Maybe the issue goes beyond the published list.

 

[hammdo]

Humm, mine are on a charger, but I do fly at least every week to 10 days...

-Don

[Ragsf15e]

3 hours ago, hammdo said:

Humm, mine are on a charger, but I do fly at least every week to 10 days...

-Don

Your g5s are on a charger?  That wouldn’t be normal unless you leave the master on?

[AerostarDriver]

I have had continuous battery issues with my primary ADI G5, it has been replaced 3 times under warrenty and has had 9 batteries installed in it. On the flip side, my G5 HSI, has the orginal battery from 2017 and still gets 4 hours of runtime on the self test.

I am glad garmin seems want to fix this problem.

[hammdo]

2 hours ago, Ragsf15e said:

Your g5s are on a charger?  That wouldn’t be normal unless you leave the master on?

True - the charger is for the SureFly . My batteries stay up pretty well. Was not sure exactly how they were wired up. Charge well when flying...

-Don

[Mooney Dog]

Oh joy, one of mine is on that list. Hopefully its the one thats been giving me a multitude of problems. 

[EricJ]

On 2/11/2022 at 6:47 PM, PT20J said:

Garmin just announced a big recall on G5s. Some apparently have the nasty tendency to run the batteries down when powered off. Evidently Garmin finally tracked it to some bad batch. https://www.garmin.com/en-US/aviationalerts/service-bulletin-22013-g5-backup-battery-discharge/

Skip

This link doesn't seem to work any more, and I can't get anything to turn up on searches on their site, and can't find a related SB.   Typical Garmin hijinks, it seems like.

[201Steve]

I don’t know if my old one was on the list or not but I spent $2,000 chasing this issue just for Garmin to finally give up and recommend a factory exchange. I had recommended that idea from the jump but my shop was following the money pit. 

[ArtVandelay]

This link doesn't seem to work any more, and I can't get anything to turn up on searches on their site, and can't find a related SB.   Typical Garmin hijinks, it seems like.

It’s Service bulletin 22013.

[EricJ]

1 minute ago, ArtVandelay said:

It’s Service bulletin 22013.

Can't find it anywhere.

 

[hammdo]

Try this:

 

https://support.garmin.com/en-US/aviation/faq/3PZHfyHuHk4mBgBhsEMZN9/

-Don

[EricJ]

4 minutes ago, hammdo said:

Try this:

 

https://support.garmin.com/en-US/aviation/faq/3PZHfyHuHk4mBgBhsEMZN9/

-Don

That's the affected SN list that references SB 22013, but the SB 22013 itself that was listed in Skips original post is nowhere that I can find now.

Edited February 15, 2022 by EricJ

[ArtVandelay]

That's the affected SN list that references SB 22013, but the SB 22013 itself that was listed in Skips original post is nowhere that I can find now.

Probably being updated to Revision B for some reason, I’d check again next day or so. You can always call them if it’s urgent.

[hammdo]

52 minutes ago, EricJ said:

That's the affected SN list that references SB 22013, but the SB 22013 itself that was listed in Skips original post is nowhere that I can find now.

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:JxBkZgbTp8sJ:https://www.garmin.com/en-US/aviationalerts/service-bulletin-22013-g5-backup-battery-discharge/+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
 

probably being updated...

 

here is revision a:

https://s23634.pcdn.co/en-US/aviationalerts/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/22013a.pdf

-Don

[PT20J]

Something weird happened since earlier today -- the entire Aviation Alerts and Advisories link on flygarmin.com has redirected to the fairly useless Aviation Support Center page.

Sigh.

[toto]

Does anyone know off the top of their head how you can retrieve the serial number from the unit itself?

[hammdo]

Logs should have it, that is how I found mine...

-Don

[PT20J]

Some digging and I found this link to the recall service bulletin

https://atlaske-content.garmin.com/filestorage//email/outbound/attachments/22013a_Time1644852998329.pdf

EDIT: I notice that the affected serno list was updated today and seems quite a bit longer than the original.

[PT20J]

18 minutes ago, toto said:

Does anyone know off the top of their head how you can retrieve the serial number from the unit itself?

It might be available somewhere in configuration mode, I don't remember. Hold the right select knob down during power up until it enters configuration mode.

[Woodpile]

The bad news is that I have a G5 newer ("4JQ043338") than the recall list and this is happening to my system (a few times). So far, the work around has temporarily resolved the issue.

The, possibly, good news is that Garmin (via Gulf Coast Avionics), claims that updating a newer system to version 8 software should resolve it. I am running 6.83.

It seems to be tough to accept that the same problem was caused by faulty hardware worthy of recall, but now it is just caused by software. Time will tell.