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hammer408

Active Member
I just returned from Oshkosh and am ready to order my engine.......ECI is now building their engines in-house and was very happy with my conversations with them.

Has anyone had their engines built by ECI and what were your experiences with your engine and their support?

Secondly, I'm somewhat perplexed as to whether to go with the standard Slick mags or go with dual P-Mags? Does anyone have any thoughts, suggestions regarding my deliema.

thanks
 
Very happy with my dual PMags. But really, if left to pure performance, the choice strongly favors any electronic ignition. I've been a gear head all my life and I'd no sooner dump my PMags and go back to magnetos than I would remove the fuel injection on my 2008 Corvette and install a Holley 4 barrel.

The primary concern seems to be relative reliability. You read a lot about every failure of an aftermarket ignition, but magneto failures don't make headlines even though most of us have had a magneto fail on us at one time in our careers. You need to do an honest risk assessment and see what you come up with. Of course, if you do that, you might discover flying itself is crazy, so make sure to keep it in context.
 
+1 for Dual P-mags. Why not get a known good engine builder - such as Aerosport Power - to assemble the engine for you?

Pete
 
ECI

I waited for Sun N Fun to order my engine. Weighed the Van's as pure stock and the ECI with P Mags. I decided and ordered my ECI I0-320 with dual P Mags from ECI during SNF and received it Midle of June. There were a few delays but I am very happy with the decision. Not run yet.
 
Dual P-Mags

hammer408 said:
I just returned from Oshkosh and am ready to order my engine.......ECI is now building their engines in-house and was very happy with my conversations with them.

Has anyone had their engines built by ECI and what were your experiences with your engine and their support?

Secondly, I'm somewhat perplexed as to whether to go with the standard Slick mags or go with dual P-Mags? Does anyone have any thoughts, suggestions regarding my deliema.

thanks
Click to expand...

IMHO dual P-Mags are the best solution for today's aircraft ignition!
 
Ignition

Hammer: This is long and is going to sound terribly old fashioned but I'm considering equipping my RV 9 with just plain vanilla Slicks to improve my chances of not getting stuck away from home base. I love and want all the things that electronic ignition offers except when you break down out of town. I saw a this scenario unfold 2 weeks ago and it may be fairly typical. A friend of mine has a 6A with a Slick impulse mag on the left side and a "common name brand" electronic ignition on the other, he flew a trip to Pensacola Fl about 300 miles away. On startup to return home the electronic ign was dead and only with considerable difficulty was he able to find someone to assist him with the troubleshooting. The system was found to be truly dead and on this sunday nobody was answering the phone at the manufacturer and he couldn't wait around 2 or 3 days so he rented a car and drove 6 hrs home. By the following Tuesday a new trigger wheel was on hand and installed (as per the mfg direction) but ign system still inop. In order to get the plane home the owner bought a O/H slick mag and new harness, had them easily installed by the same mechanics and via another rent car went got his plane and flew it home. He is planning on keeping the mag on the right side. I'm not sure what the answer is. The variable timing, hotter spark and less moving parts are vastly superior to the Stone Age magneto, but if you need service almost any A&P knows slicks and has ready access to parts.

Don Broussard
RV 9 rebuild in progress
 
If you are concerned about getting Pmags fixed when away from home base, why don't you keep a spare Pmag or an overhauled standard mag in your hangar. That way you can call any one of your flying buddies to bring it to you.

Samething goes for spark plugs, plug wires, tire tubes, oil, tools etc. All things mechanical requires spare parts to be available.

Bevan
 
When I was deciding on an engine, I was struggling on which way to go also. I had read all the pros and cons of the different combinations out there and I finally decided that I would really like to have dual P-Mags. However, I'm hard boiled enough that I wanted to prove their value to myself personally, so I decided to go with one P-Mag and one Slick. After I get some experience with it, I may go for the second P-Mag.
 
I have about 500 hours on my same P-mags but in in two different engines.

While I co-developed the EICommander to keep an eye on them, I keep no spares and trust them with my life on every flight.

In the end, you need to fly behind the technology you are comfortable with, even if that includes standard magnetos or some new fangled electronic ignition.

As for the ECI engine, my current engine is an ECI O-360 that I assembled myself, with some help and I couldn't be happier.
 
When I traded out my last Slick for a P-Mag, the Slick went onto a Tomahawk. It failed within two weeks. Like my P-Mags!

Bob
 
EFII reliability

We continually wonder why pilots consider failure of engine electronics as acceptable. I have been in the vehicle electronics business since the 1980s and can't imagine selling boxes for aircraft that fail. Any of you electrical engineers out there know that these ignition control boxes can be built so they won't fail - EVER! The other ignition manufacturers don't seem to get the importance of fail safe electronics.

We have not had a single failure of an ignition control box. In our opinion, this is a necessary attribute of any aircraft ignition. Mags will all fail, other brands of ignitions have very well documented failure rates and modes.

If you want real reliability, join the rapidly growing number of people flying our systems,

Robert Paisley
 
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For anyone trying to decide, I have a new Slick Model 4371 W/impulse couple and plug leads All parts are new and were installed on an engine I bought. So I removed one mag and installed a P-Mag. Get the best of both worlds. Have yet to run engine with this new combination should work well.

Asking $800.00 SAVE CASH


Aircraft Spruce Price: Slick 4371 mag w/ impulse couple $834.00
Core Charge 150.00
Total $984.00
 
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rcpaisley said:
We continually wonder why pilots consider failure of engine electronics as acceptable. ...
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Isn't that why we have two ignitions?

Even with yours or the G3i ignition, I doubt a pilot would take off, if part of the system was not working.

A little drift here...
I just learned that the Continental O-200D (Their 100 HP LSA engine) is eating up the right slicks in less than a 100 hours. Continental thinks it might be a harmonics issue and just started looking into this issue last week. The left, impulse coupled mag, doesn't seem to have the issue.

If any of you know someone who is having this problem with the O-200D, have them contact Continental. The more data points they have the quicker they will be able to resolve this.
 
N941WR said:
Isn't that why we have two ignitions....
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No, two plugs are required to ensure complete combustion in the relatively large combustion chamber found in aircraft engines. Redundancy is a byproduct of this operational requirement.
 
Toobuilder said:
No, two plugs are required to ensure complete combustion in the relatively large combustion chamber found in aircraft engines. Redundancy is a byproduct of this operational requirement.
Click to expand...

Yes, but back when this requirement came to be, they weren't running these monster four cylinder engines.
 
G3i Ignition

I'm very happy with my G3i Ignition. It retains both mags. If the electronic ignition fails you can turn it off an go home on the mags. I have an RV-4 with an O-320 FP. My fuel consumption at 75% went from 9.4 gph to 8.0 gph. I can throttle back and get it down to 6.0 gph. Static RPM went up 75 RPM and top speed increased by 4.5 mph at 8,000 ft. I gained 150 fpm climb. Spark plugs have never run cleaner. Give Thomas a call.
 
I just removed my 2 impulse coupled Slick mags in favor of 2 P-Mags and while attaching plug wires in the traditional manner of alternating top and bottom plug wires with each mag thought that really the cylinder doesn't care how the top or bottom plugs fire. Since these are inexpensive auto plugs why worry about how electrodes wear? So I thought I'd fire top plugs with the L P-Mag and bottom on the R P-Mag. Anyone see problems with this arrangement?
 
I alternated my plugs top to bottom with the theory that I was sharing the load across the two P-Mags more evenly, same theory as standard Mags.

I imagine that the bottom plugs would be harder to ignite regardless of whether your using a Mag or P-Mag ???

Does anyone have any idea about this ?

Cheers
 
Firing top left / bottom right etc. as traditional, theory is, under starting, if the engine is flooded, the top plugs would not be fuel fouled and allow start up if starting with one magneto.
 
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