miyu1975

miyu1975

Well Known Member
I called an engine shop yesterday that will build the ECI Titan Kit engines. I asked many questions and told him as to what I was wanting. I mentioned that I wanted dual P mags and he quickly said he recommends one P mag and one regular mag to start with. He said to make sure they work, I guess....any thoughts to this.?:confused:
 
pmags

I have been flying for 3 years 2 months with dual PMAGs and my experience has been good. I did have them configured so they did not advance timing until I had 50 hours on my new engine.
 
I can understand the thought behind having one p-mag and one standard mag - different failure modes make for a good backup - but not sure of the rationale for only one pmag "to start with". The down side of having only one is that you will effectively be running on one mag (the one with more advance) all the time and lose a little performance relative to two p-mags.

P-mags seem to have finally gained traction and improved their reputaton with respect to reliability. There is little doubt in my mind that you will be happy with them.

full disclosure: I have two p-mags and am a satisfied customer

erich
 
miyu1975 said:
... and he quickly said he recommends one P mag and one regular mag to start with. He said to make sure they work, I guess....any thoughts to this.?:confused:
Click to expand...

So...

If you said you wanted to run two regular mags, would he say to replace one with a P-mag just in case one of the regular mags went bad?

P-mags are not tied together, thus if you had a problem, you can turn off the offending mag. Truth is, they seem to have fixed the problems. (I've been running a dual P-mag setup since '07. OK, well not for the last year but they are mounted on the new engine and will fire it.)

One thing, with a new or newly overhauled engine, I recommend you force both P-mags to the "A" curve (put the jumper in) and plug the vacuum line to limit the advance. Do this for the first 10 to 15 hours and then connect the vacuum line and optionally remove the jumper.
 
Garage Guy said:
Do you have an explanation for this: http://www.vansairforce.com/community/showpost.php?p=416132&postcount=8 Seems on the face of it like a problem.

--Paul
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Paul,

Yes and no. Jim is a customer of our EICommander and my partner and I worked closely with him to figure out what was going on with his P-mags.

Unfortunately Jim wanted to fly his plane and not spend time debugging the P-mags. I can't say definitively if his issue was with the P-mags or his installation. I could be one, both, or none.

Still, one person with a problem is statistically insignificant. Don't take me wrong, an ignition problem is significant but even Slick sends out a bad one every once in a while.

The problems Jim was seeing did not fit any of the patterns of any other failures E-mag Ignitions has seen in the past. We were encouraging Jim to send his back so E-mag could look them over, or better yet, I was going to send him one of mine (since I'm still working on my engine swap) and fly with what I know is a good P-mag. As I said, Jim would rather fly than deal with sorting this out and I can't say as I blame him, so this never happened.

I can?t say the problem was the P-mag and I can?t say it was Jim?s installation. All I can say is, I don?t know.

Jim, if I get my plane flying sometime this decade, I would like to try your P-mags on my engine and report back to you what I find. That is, if you don?t sell them between now and then.
 
One P-mag/LightSpeed plus one Slick is a viable arrangement. Performance loss over two electronic ignitions is probably trivial.

I have one regular mag and one LightSpeed.

If you go this route, be diligent on regular mag maintenance.
 
About a year and a half ago, I asked Bobby, ECI's engine tester about this. He liked the Pmags, and his thought was that these engines are designed to have the 'flame front' meet in the middle of the cylinder, meaning that both should fire at the same time. He preferred two p-mags for that reason. He didn't say it would damage the engine to have one electronic and one regular mag, but only some potential in that direction.

I have dual pmags with 25 hours on a new ECI engine. For the first 15 hours, I also plugged the vacuum line to limit the advance to 26 degrees. The rationale is stated in the manual....since new engines may tend to run hot at first anyway, why add to the issue with more advance.

Since I didn't have any cooling issues, I hooked up the vacuum and am now running at the factory suggested "A" curve. No problems so far (fingers crossed).
 
great thanks for the replys...think I'll go with 2 pmags to start with too. I have seen a few post about "connecting the vacuum"...I will not be having vacuum on my plane, it'll be all electric. Are we talking about the same "vacuum"?
 
Brantel said:
No...They are talking about the manifold pressure.....
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Exactly, Tee off your MP line and then to the P-mags. You can then split off that line to go to both P-mags.

You do want to connect this so your P-mags will optimize the timing based on the power output of the engine.
 
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