912 CDI (SMD) Failures

True Roger,

Rotax should not be held to account for faulty installation (including poor air flow) but as for  "Poor cowl design" ;

Rotax should be aware that its engines will be used within a wide variety of cowl designs, both certified & not. Cowl temperatures will range from well below freezing to whatever the engine might be putting out after landing / prolonged taxi in high temperatures (150C?). A QA driven company would ensure its modules are able to tolerate the full range & then some.

I do not have understanding to debate the module construction points, raised by Kevin - if true  can only be Rotax at fault .

In answer to Roger's point about installation, all of the failures that I reported were from Evektor Eurostars (Sportstar in the USA). The installations only vary in as much as some are fitted with 912UL, some 912ULS and others 914. The arrangement of the engine installation is pretty much identical in each. Most of these Eurostars are operated in the UK climate where the ambient temperatures are probably in the range 0 to 25°C 90% of the time. The Eurostar cowling is not particularly tight around the engine and airflow is reasonable.

The regulatory environment in the UK does not allow for 'shoddy' installations. They all need to comply to a minimum standard and they are inspected every year to ensure compliance.

I know that the guys in Australia were suffering a lot of failures possibly due to the high temperatures. That is why Mark Kyle did some investigation and upgraded the existing design to address the common failures.

So in summary, I would say that the failures seen by Eurostar owners in the UK are from aircraft in a fairly consistent and benign environment where the ignition modules have not been particularly abused. This may not be the case in other climates or in other aircraft where if anything I would imagine that the problem is even worse.

No matter what the regulatory system has in place if all those failures happened from just two types of aircraft vs hundreds of different types world wide under more extreme conditions then I'd seriously have to question their installation.

Just an opinion: I helped a friend install two Ignitech modules on a Zenair.

Why this choice ? Simply the price, 330 € instead of 1800 € for the Rotax.

We have installed these new modules on the firewall on the cockpit side. The new boxes were ordered with 90 cm of wires and with the same connectors as the original Rotax ones.

In the decision to install Ignitech modules, in addition to the price, it is that we knew a dozen people in our entourage whose engines run with these boxes.

For the rest and the statistics, we are in no position to talk about it, ten people without a problem is not enough to think about it, on the other hand the price motivated our installation, and it works very well.

Jacques

Jacques, are you saying that you all fitted Ignitech modules even though you did not suffer any module failures?