Pirep on new Surefly Rev D

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dfad1469
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Pirep on new Surefly Rev D

Post by dfad1469 »

Hello everyone,

Back in April bought a 2007 DA-40XL with all the great upgrades. It has the three blade composite prop, fully upgraded avionics including a 345R for ads-b in/out and the powerflow exhaust. The best thing was that the engine only had 750 hours on it. It passed the pre-buy inspection with flying colors (although they missed several things...see below) where the scoped the engine and found the cylinders clean.

After closing on the aircraft, I flew it from Lexington, KY to my home airport of San Carlos, CA. Awesome flight and since have put almost 150 hours on it. Then, in September, it was time for my first annual. I was expecting an increased cost because of the first annual with my Diamond specialist mechanic, but it was almost 4 times my expected cost. Parking brakes leaking, engine cowlings needed new coatings, wing walks overly worn...the list went on and on. Hey....price of ownership.

However, one thing that stood out to me was that my mags needed to be rebuilt. So, having read on the forums that Surefly had come out with a "v2" of their solid state ignition, I asked my mechanic about it. He said that they would no longer install the "v1" due the DA40 having a 24 volt system and seeing too many issues, but that they were fine with trying out the "v2".

So, they installed everything and after a few weeks I was able to do a few test flights. I need to do some local flights because I had to deliver some equipment down to San Diego and was planning on taking the plane. Test flights went great and I did notice a few 100 fpm increased climb above 6500 feet along with much better increased start times. I also did notice that my cylinders were running a bit hotter, but still well lower than average, so no issues.

Day of the trip comes and I have to fly all over Southern California to dodge clouds. I eventually landed about an hour north of San Diego and drove the rest of the way. This was a Monday. On Wednesday afternoon, me and a colleague drove back up, ate some dinner and hopped in the the plane at 6pm to fly back. Plane had trouble starting and when I got to run-up the left mag (now a Surefly) was completely dead. Was going straight to zero. Right was working fine. So, taxied back and found a hotel....wasn't going anywhere.

Next morning I called around and found a mechanic on the field that would work on it. After trying it again to ensure it was still dead, I called my mechanic, explained the situation. My mechanic called Surefly who then called me to do some troubleshooting. So, in the transient area, I pulled the top cowling and checked that nothing was loose. Then, under the direction of the tech, I turned on the mag and checked the trouble code.....which was a rapidly flashing LED. Not good....means it's dead.

Tech agrees that it's a warranty replacement. He said he could overnight it. I informed the tech that I was only a 45 minute drive from Spruce and that the mechanic I had spoken with said they had 10 in stock. Tech told me that would probably be the fastest, so I asked him to call ahead to them and have the part ready which he agreed and then asked for the number.

So, I make the 45 minute drive and find that the tech hasn't called. I then called Surefly and left a message for the tech which he never returned. So, I showed the Spruce counter rep the part number I needed and he said that if I brought the old part back, he would refund me the cost of the part. So, he basically sold me a new ignition which I took back. Little did I know, Spruce had no idea about the "v2" part (which is really the Rev D of the same part number), so he gave me a Rev B....the one with the 24v issue. So, I drive back, it's now Thursday at lunch and the field mechanic spends all afternoon and can't get the thing to time. Finally, they discover the Rev B vs Rev D issue and tell me to go back and get the right part.

I drive back to Spruce and they give me a Rev D in the wrong part. Drive back to the plane and the field mechanic is home, so another night in the hotel and it's Friday morning....and I have to go back to Spruce. At this point, I send my colleague to San Diego airport to fly commercial home and I make the third drive to Spruce. Turns out, all ten of the non-impulse coupled Surefly ignitions are Rev B including six that they received just the week before. So, we finally got a hold of Surefly again and found that they they won't ship Rev Ds to distributors until November. So, Spruce is mad because they weren't aware of this, and I'm mad because I now have to wait for them to overnight a Rev D and pray the field mechanic will work on a Saturday.

At this point, I have to get home for weekend activities with the family and I can't risk shipping issues. So, I fly commercial back home and have them drop ship the warranty part to the field mechanic. Glad I did.....the weekend UPS guy couldn't figure out how to get on the airfield, so it wasn't delivered until Monday mid-morning. I flew back down on Monday (with the original mag, just in case) and drove the hour from Orange county and got there around lunch. They finally were able to get the plane up around 1pm and I flew it home......no issues since.

So, I give Surefly points for the tech working with me quickly. However, he could have saved *alot* of trouble if he would have just called Spruce ahead of time like he said he would. Also, the field mechanic was super cool, and he only charged me $550 for swapping out the ignition even though he had to do it twice. However, Surefly refuses to pay for that even though the one that went bad had less than 9 hours on it and left me stranded for three days. They did call a few weeks later and told me they had tested the original ignition and found nothing wrong with it, but since I had so much trouble they wouldn't charge me for the warranty replacement......gee thanks.

In summary, I don't know if I would recommend this upgrade. I now fly around with my original mag in case this happens again. I have been disappointed in Surefly as they didn't really follow through with some important stuff and they told me that they were going to put my original ignition back in circulation since they couldn't find anything wrong with it. I do like their product.....plane is more efficient. But I hate the feeling both that it could go out again and that they won't really support me beyond maybe giving me a newish part. But, I am just one data point.

Happy to answer questions and sorry for the long post.

-Joe
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Rich
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Re: Pirep on new Surefly Rev D

Post by Rich »

This failure is the first I've heard of, but of course the rev D is newly released. I also now have the rev D in my plane and it has about the same number of hours you had at failure. So we'll see.

An interesting complication is that the previous rev of the SIM is perfectly fine for those who have 12/14V systems, of which there are many.
2002 DA40-180: MT, PowerFlow, 530W/430W, KAP140, ext. baggage, 1090 ES out, 2646 MTOW, 40gal., Surefly, Flightstream 210, Orion 600 LED, XeVision, Aspen E5
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Re: Pirep on new Surefly Rev D

Post by waynemcc999 »

I must be missing something... I've been flying for 5+ years with the ElectroAir EIS... and only one issue. That issue had to do with some wires chaffing behind the G1000 and shorting out the EIS; most likely not an ElectroAir-caused problem.
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Rich
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Re: Pirep on new Surefly Rev D

Post by Rich »

Mine is doing just fine. I noticed some very interesting behavior today (in a good way) when leaning. It leads me to think the timing map has been changed. I'll need to redo the GAMI test to validate what I'm observing but the bottom line is CHTs may be less of a problem.
2002 DA40-180: MT, PowerFlow, 530W/430W, KAP140, ext. baggage, 1090 ES out, 2646 MTOW, 40gal., Surefly, Flightstream 210, Orion 600 LED, XeVision, Aspen E5
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