new, refurbished DA40 woes

[Rich]

If the breaker had popped, that's easily checked. It doesn't reset, it'd still be popped unless someone manually reset it. Many of us have seen it happen, but it's always been in the context of an over-discharged battery, causing it to try to draw too much current from the main bus. But this happens very early in the flight. Certain kinds of battery failures in flight could cause this to happen, I suppose. Otherwise there isn't enough load on the essential bus to cause it the breaker to trip.

I assume the missing fairing bolts were all on the nose wheel fairing. These are very prone to coming off and require something akin to Loctite 242, which eliminates the problem.

One thing we pretty much all overlook is the need to periodically load test the main battery. It's in the ICAW for the Concorde battery. If this is the original battery it needs to be replace.

Also, if the alternator fails in flight, it behooves one to shed electrical load. Either using the Essential Bus Switch, which cuts out a specific set of items, or by manually turning off anything you don't need at the moment.

[ThomasD]

delaPlanet,

I must admit I would not expect to have such problems. I know that taking apart an airplane & reassembling can cause new problems that weren't problems before, but surely if the maintenance shop is doing their job then you should not be having the long list of issues that you are?
I am sorry, and I'm not trying to be smug, but by way of offering a comparison: I had the engine on my DA40 overhauled and prop overhauled. As the aircraft could not be flown to the engine folks nor the prop folks I had to get my normal maintenance company to come to the airfield and remove both, sending the engine to one shop and prop to another. Both the engine shop and prop shop saw things that were not in pristine shape (e.g. magnetos) so they recommended and I agreed that they were replaced. It was my normal maintenance shop that removed the engine and prop then re-installed both, at a location remote from their home base so not ideal working conditions. So, major pieces of work done, by 3 different companies, but not had a single issue since..

~~~~~~~

Anyway, you are where you are, but if I may, one suggestion I have is that as well as the obvious issues that you are seeing, is to look at the log books to check that the Continuing Airworthiness items have been done, like the backup battery for the backup AI, Powerflow exhaust inspections, AmSafe seatbelt inspection, 6 year fuel tank hose replacement when it should have been done [IIRC now no longer required, but interesting to note if it was done when it should have been], rudder cable replacement when it should have been done [and I think now depends whether the cables are stainless steel or not, if it needs to be done again], etc..

Tom

[Sandy]

I have had only good experience with, and have only heard great things about, Glenn Lawler, who is actually with SouthTec, rather than LifeStyle, and I have had only good experiences with LifeStyle where I took a Diamond factory course. In reading the original post I wondered why the "missing bolts" in the wheel fairings were not spotted prior to the first flight if any kind of preflight had been conducted. I also wondered why the "holes in the hoses" or any excessively "worn hoses" were not spotted prior to the first flight. I know that if I was about to fly a plane that was new to me on a transcontinental flight I would certainly remove the cowling and inspect the engine compartment visually. Also, if the G1000 was "acting up" since day 1, why did that not get looked at immediately? How was/is it "acting up"?

Regarding the battery/electrical issues... If you look at my prior posts you will see that an "issue" with the DA40 electrical system is that there are two circuit breakers... for the Essential Bus and the Main Bus... that are essentially in series. If the battery is low (do you keep it on a Battery Minder?), then the charging current can easily exceed the current limit of whichever circuit breaker (Essential or Main) trips first as they are both rated the same. The only solution to this issue is to make sure, during the taxi out and run up, that the battery voltage is correct and that the charging current is within the limits of the circuit breakers. Of course part of the run up should be a check that no circuit breakers are tripped. If the battery level is low, the alternator will try to charge it using a current that will be too high when the throttle is advanced, and one of the circuit breakers will trip. To avoid this you need to watch the current rate. If it's over 25 amps during your run up, you just have to sit there at an RPM that keeps the charging current lower than 25 amps, and allow the battery to charge to a level that adequately reduces the current draw. Otherwise, when you advance the throttle you will trip the circuit breaker in flight, resulting in the experienced loss of electric power... been there, done that....

Additional tips... carry a handheld radio and have a backup like ForeFlight on your phone or iPad. Again... been there, done that...

All in all, I have to question the competence of the purchasers, as the "big" issues noted (missing screws and bolts, G1000 issues, etc.) all seem relatively minor, and should have been caught prior to leaving North Carolina, while the inflight electrical issue was, no doubt, caused by a partially discharged battery, resulting in excessive current flow that caused the breaker to trip without the pilot noticing that it had done so.

As Colin noted, many of the other issues were minor ones.

Sandy

[delaPlanet]

Glenn from SouthTec has been very cool in helping us troubleshoot stuff from a distance. Lifestyle has been good, too; they're all setting up some time to conference call about whether they will cover any of the cost for some of our initial "bugs". It would have been better for them to have delivered us a fantastic product, but at least they're doing what they can to make up for its shortcomings.

I did not pickup the airplane myself, so I wasn't able to open everything up and look at it (my co-owner and the ferry pilot inspected it). All in all, most of the issues are minor and probably to be expected with such an extensive refurbishment (wings off, 0-time engine, etc). We should have had an independent pre-buy inspection, but better attention-to-detail from the seller would have been...well....better. At some point, the cascade of details gets down to a level that only an A&P can understand and that's what makes me a little wary. If they forgot to put bolts in the main and nosewheel fairings, what else did they forget? If they decided to let it go with some worn hoses, what else did they decide to not replace? We all have to trust the experts at SOME point. Even if I'm building my own airplane I'm trusting the experts at design/engineering. Anyhow, I'm not trying to bag on SouthTec or Lifestyle; they've been trying to help us out, retroactively, and they certainly don't have to do that, so they clearly have a commitment to making happy customers.

As far as our electrical issue goes - we are still awaiting a diagnosis. The airplane was finally brought back to home base today after the flying club flew down to pick it up with a maintenance crew. They dropped in a new battery and flew it back home, but I haven't heard anything else since then. It sure does sound (symptomatically) like the main bus or essential bus tie breaker popped but until the maintenance guys tell me that, I'm not willing to make any judgments about it. The pilot who had the electrical failure assured us that he checked all the breakers in flight when he started having an issue.

I haven't yet had tried pulling the log file from the G1000....how much data is on that thing? Does it record breakers and current and warnings/annunciators?

Does anyone else think this 25amp bus tie breaker is kind of a bad design? I used to fly airliners and EVERY electrical anomaly had an annunciation. It just seems like the essential bus breaker tripping is something that could very easily go undetected until after the battery was basically dead already. I'm definitely going to put "check breakers" on my climb checklist from now on so I don't have the same problem somewhere in IMC or at night.

The G1000 had a Data Path Failure message immediately after its ferry flight from NC to CA. We still have no idea what's causing it, but I have it scheduled to be looked at by an avionics shop in a few weeks.

Anyhow, thanks for the input everyone, I'll let you all know what we find with the electrical system (hopefully some info tomorrow). At least I can fly my Starduster and not worry about electricity in the meantime

[pietromarx]

I haven't yet had tried pulling the log file from the G1000....how much data is on that thing? Does it record breakers and current and warnings/annunciators?

The log file will show you a 1 Hz (once per second) log of position, sensor, and engine data. It doesn't record alerts and notifications. It will show you voltage and amperage on the electrical side, which will certainly tell you how the battery, alternator, and load are doing second-by-second. It also includes the next waypoint, distance, etc.

You can take the log and throw it into a spreadsheet, Google Earth, online analyzers, Matlab, R, etc.

It something like an FDR without the crash / fire resistance.

[delaPlanet]

Hey, all, just want to give everyone on the thread an update on this stuff -

The electrical system issues were 100% pilot related, as far as we can tell. Glenn Lawler was totally right - our rental pilot ran the battery down on the ground, probably due abusing the starter which was corroborated by the maintenance crew who turned the aircraft over to him. This caused the Main Bus Tie breaker to trip which de-coupled the battery from the alternator causing a slow battery drain over the course of a few hours. The pilot assured me that he had checked all the circuit breakers, but sure enough, when the remote maintenance crew went to pick up the stranded plane a few days later, the Main Bus Tie breaker was sticking out like a sore thumb. On top of him not knowing how to start a fuel-injected aircraft, electing to make a 2 hour flight in the middle of the night after a Low Voltage warning, and not looking at all of his circuit breakers, it seems that he evasively took posession of the aircraft keys from our dispatcher for a middle-of-the-night flight even after repeated warnings about the airplane being limited to Day/VFR flying only until our remaining G1000 error code could be cleared. We all know that accidents are a bunch of items stacking up and luckily for this guy and his passenger, these mistakes didn't culminate in an accident this time.

Most importantly, Lifestyle Aviation and Glenn Lawler from SouthTec have all been FANTASTIC in the last week helping us address some of the minor "fresh overhaul" issues we've been having with the aircraft. They are even paying for a couple of items that were uncovered AFTER we took delivery of the airplane, which is really demonstrating their commitment to happy customers. I had a very productive conference call with Sam and John Armstrong from Lifestyle Aviation and Glenn Lawler this morning. They're a great group of people who giving us ongoing G1000 support as we get used to the ins/outs of such a complicated software/hardware system.

Thanks to everyone on the thread for feedback. If you guys are looking for an airplane I would highly recommend Lifestyle Aviation, they've been awesome.

[ZAV]

Glad to hear you've figured out the pilot error and are getting support from the seller. All good things....except letting someone else fly your airplane, that sounds scary.

[pietromarx]

That's good news. The G1000 issue is, as noted above, likely just one bent / missing pin or broken / frayed wire between a box and the GIA-63Ws. Given all of the work done in the engine compartment, that's the place I'd start.

[Colin]

I had five bent pins on the G1000 set of boxes after the work at the factory in London, ON. It was a nightmare to figure out and the worst sort of problem (with computer-related stuff) because it was intermittent.