My Rotax experience
in 912 / 914 Technical Questions
6 years ago
I would like to share my opinion with the thousands of other Rotax owners, it is my opinion, and worth exactly what you pay for it. My Rotax has been very, very good to me and never let me down, ever. I have sold my plane, 912ULS 1100 hours, 16 years old. I think I have earned the right to put it in print.
This forum has been a godsend for Rotax owners, especially if you can and like to do your own work. I commend the moderators who spend a great deal of time helping us out with Rotax problems. But as a builder with repairman's certificate I have had a very hard time agreeing with maintenance time limits. Keep in mind if I was a certified mechanic working on other people's engines, I would follow Rotax's requirements to the letter, this protects me, not Rotax. Everyone says Rotax pricing is high because of their exposure to liability. Rotax corporations are in Austria, India, and Canada as far as I can find, so if you have a liability concern with their product, good luck finding any one to help.
That said, there have been some extremely frustrating problems. Continuous changing of parts mandatory by Rotax, (fuel pumps, ignition modules, oil pump parts, cooler caps, oil filters, just to name a few). These mandated changes cost full price, no discount to the owner. Kick back on starting with zero solutions from Rotax until Soft Start was developed by someone in England for $200, Rotax finally offered two new ignition modules for $2000 and used this guy’s solution to solve the problem. Now it is carburetor floats, many have changed them, only to find the new ones still defective.This looks like a Bing problem to me and not cheap.
Maintenance manuals that are archaic at best. Find a Honda GoldWing motorcycle manual and you will not believe the amount of information, detail and pictures on the entire machine in easy plain English.
Okay, I am done! Remember it is my opinion, please don’t deny me an opinion even if you disagree,
Dale
This forum has been a godsend for Rotax owners, especially if you can and like to do your own work. I commend the moderators who spend a great deal of time helping us out with Rotax problems. But as a builder with repairman's certificate I have had a very hard time agreeing with maintenance time limits. Keep in mind if I was a certified mechanic working on other people's engines, I would follow Rotax's requirements to the letter, this protects me, not Rotax. Everyone says Rotax pricing is high because of their exposure to liability. Rotax corporations are in Austria, India, and Canada as far as I can find, so if you have a liability concern with their product, good luck finding any one to help.
That said, there have been some extremely frustrating problems. Continuous changing of parts mandatory by Rotax, (fuel pumps, ignition modules, oil pump parts, cooler caps, oil filters, just to name a few). These mandated changes cost full price, no discount to the owner. Kick back on starting with zero solutions from Rotax until Soft Start was developed by someone in England for $200, Rotax finally offered two new ignition modules for $2000 and used this guy’s solution to solve the problem. Now it is carburetor floats, many have changed them, only to find the new ones still defective.This looks like a Bing problem to me and not cheap.
Maintenance manuals that are archaic at best. Find a Honda GoldWing motorcycle manual and you will not believe the amount of information, detail and pictures on the entire machine in easy plain English.
Okay, I am done! Remember it is my opinion, please don’t deny me an opinion even if you disagree,
Dale
