When is Rotax going to recognize this regulator is a piece of junk. We are forced to fly a $20,000 engine, never being confident the regulator will last thru the trip. I carry a spare, but worry that it may not even work brand new. I know life can be possibly extended by keeping it cool and not overloading it at idle and I try to do all this, but it still makes me feel sometimes that I am flying a snowmobile engine (which Rotax has worked very hard at living down that notion). All it would take is a partnership with someone like Silent Hektik or similar to make available a regulator we could install and forget. How hard is that? I say this with a total attitude of constructive criticism because I love my Rotax 912uls otherwise.
Potential long-term fix for 912 charging problems and Ducati voltage regulator-rectifier (VRR).
In 18 months I had gone through three Ducati VRRs on a brand new SportCruiser with 912ULS engine. After highly motivated research to find a fix, I found the Silent Hektik (SH) F4112. For reasons unknown (but lots of speculation), SH will not sell this unit to anyone in the US. I worked around that problem from a friend in Norway. Here's a good post on its installation on an RV-12: http://www.vansairforce.com/community/showthread.php?t=130921
After installing the SH VRR, I now have just under 400 hrs on it with not a single hiccup. As for the Ducati unit, heat appears to be its #1 killer with possibly bad ground running second. Contrary to the Rotax installation manual (Ch. 24-00-00, 2.2.1), Czech Aircraft Works (CAW) does not install a ground wire directly from the VRR to the negative battery terminal to ensure adequate grounding. Instead, CAW installs the VRR on the firewall with the plug pointed up (ripe for getting wet and corroded) and grounded by the two mounting screws pulling the back of the VRR into a galvanized steel panel. It doesn't seem to take much oxidation to increase the surface resistance of galvanized steel.) Excess heat comes from heat getting trapped under the top cowling after engine shutdown. To counter this problem, I always open the oil fill door after engine shutdown to allow all that trapped hot air to escape.
SH claims that the F41112 has almost 10 times the cooling area and a capacity of 47A as opposed to the max 22A capacity of the Ducati unit. Getting SH to allow marketing the F4112 in the US would sure help.
Several other 912 owners now have the SH VRR installed and working fine except for one failure that I'm aware of. Physical inspection of the failed unit shows evidence of overheating between the two Yellow terminals (marked G for Giallo, which is yellow in Italian). This suggests a high likelihood of arcing due to a wiring or plug defect. For those having troubles with the Ducati unit, this might be the fix.
So it was improperly mounted upside down, on dissimilar metals, improperly grounded, exposed to excessive heat by it is still a piece of junk???
James, do you have a similar installation problem that would explain the multiple failures?
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