EMag Problem Story

[bullojm1]

This was posted briefly on the "other" forum and then censored out. I feel this is something current and potential emag/pmag customers should know. It seems scary to how many failures this gentleman encountered with the emagair products.

Folks:

While I had planned on writing a description and warning of the issues
that I had on my trip east in July/August with my electronic ignitions
from Emagair (Pmag/Emag), the message that was forwarded to the
canard-aviators list by Ric Lee, With a write-up by Gary Cotner
describing his crash of his Thorp T-18 due to Emag/Pmag failures has
prompted me to accelerate the writing of this warning. So here it is.

History (short - a search of the COZY mailing list archives will turn
up all my previous posts on this subject):

In August of 2004 I purchased a Pmag from Emagair to replace one of my
magnetos. During operation over the next months, I had numerous
issues with intermittent missing. Brad and Tom at Emagair were
extremely good at customer service and replaced my units numerous
times whenever I had an issue. Obviously, I was not happy about the
problems, but I truly wanted them to succeed - the idea for the units
is a great one. By the summer of 2005, after having problems with a
unit during my Instrument Instruction, and further problems with
replacement units, I threw in the towel, sent the unit back, and got a
refund. While replacing the unit with a rebuilt magneto with Ken
Miller, we discovered some anomalous wear on the Emagair soft drive
gear - Ken was very concerned about this, and I'll get to that issue
later.

Fast forward to February, 2007. I figured they had had more than
enough time (1.5 years) to fix any issues that they had, so I wanted
to give Emagair another try. I know that many of you thought that I
was insane, and given the rest of this story, you may have very well
been correct. But I wanted them to succeed and put Slick/Bendix out
of business... At any rate, I got a new generation 3 unit (version
113) and installed it. Within the first month, I had issues with
mis-timing, and worked with Emagair to replace the unit. After
problems with a second unit, I had been able to run for over a year
and 120 hours with no issues whatsoever on the third version 113 unit
that I had installed in the spring of 2007. I finally felt like they
had the issues licked.

After having a magneto failure (reported on list) back in early June
of this year (2008), I decided that since I had been having good luck
with the Pmag, that I'd get an Emag to go along with it to replace the
magneto that had failed. Emagair offered to upgrade my existing Pmag
from the version 113 that I had to a version 114 at the same time that
they were sending me a new version 114 Emag. Hey - something for
nothing - take it, right?

I installed both units and flew locally for about 10 hours, taking
friends for rides, going places for lunch, etc. No problems at all -
engine was running like a top.
In mid July, 2008, I headed east at the crack of dawn for a two week
trip that would take me to Provincetown, MA for a week vacation, a few
days in NJ with my mother and sisters for my father's footstone
dedication, and then to OSHKOSH with my wife for the obvious reasons
and to give the COZY and Canard fora. I took off at 5:30 AM, just as
the sun was rising, and headed east. After about an hour and a half,
near Kingman, AZ, the engine started running a TINY bit differently -
a mag check seemed clean - it was running OK on either EI, but the
CHT's had gone up about 10-20 degrees and the power was down a bit. I
continued the flight for another 4.5 hours with no issues, landing in
Clinton, OK for gas, oil and a bathroom break.

Upon runup, I found that one EI was NOT working at all, but I was in
the middle of nowhere and had places to be. I'll be writing another
story about all of the poor decisions I made on this 36.5 hour trip,
and won't address them here, but I'll just describe the events because
that's what's germane to the warning.

I decided to take off on one EI to get to Ohio, where I'd be staying
overnight with Bill Kastenholz. I took off on one EI, climbed over
the airport to cruising level, and headed off. About 10 minutes after
takeoff, the second EI kicked in and the engine continued running as
it had for the previous 4.5 hours - CHT's a little elevated (but not
dangerous), power a bit down from normal. 5.5 hours later I landed in
Ohio.

The next morning, after refueling, I took off (again on one EI - the
bad one seemed to not work when cold and work when hot) and flew
towards MA. On the way I stopped at Westerly, RI to visit Don
Ponciroli but we didn't connect and I called Emagair to talk to them
about the issues I was having with the 114 units. I then flew to
Norwood, MA to visit Jose Velez, and after a couple of hours on to
Provincetown, MA. Each time, I took off on one EI, and each time, the
second one kicked in after 10 minutes of warming up. It was apparent
that there was a problem with timing, but since it didn't run on the
ground when cold, I couldn't adjust it.

Emagair sent me a replacement unit in P'town and I replaced it. A
test runup indicated that it was running fine, along with the other
one. On Friday of that week, I flew down to Brookhaven airport on
Long-Island with my son and nephew to bring my nephew home after the
vacation week. There was no issue on that flight, and no issue on
runup. However, about 7 minutes after taking off from Brookhaven,
just about over Orient Point, the engine suddenly started running like
**** - RPM's dropped off, CHT's shot through the roof on two
cylinders, and power decreased substantially. I brought the power
back and made a precautionary landing with my son at Easthaven.

On the ground, I called Ken Miller (whom I had spoken to for a few
minutes on the ground at Brookhaven), described the symptoms, and he
gave me a few things to look for. It turned out that one of the EI's
had failed catastrophically, with the timing shifting by a huge amount
(no wonder the CHT's were through the roof - it was firing on the
intake stroke). Retiming it twice did nothing - it wouldn't hold a
timing set. The one that had failed was NOT the replacement unit - it
was the second unit that had worked OK on the whole flight east. The
replacement unit was working OK. I had to completely unplug the power
from the unit in order to get it to stop firing, but once I did, the
engine ran OK on the one EI (the replacement unit) that was left.

My son and I took off from Easthaven on the one EI and flew
uneventfully back to Provincetown. I called Emagair to let them know,
and they agreed to send another replacement to NJ, where I would be
the next day. I sent my wife to NJ via car instead of having her fly
with me, and we made arrangements for her to fly commercial to OSH
rather than with me in the plane - I would pick her up when I got
there in Appleton.
In NJ, I received another replacement unit, went out to Caldwell
airport and installed it. Checks of both EI's indicated that they
were working.

The next day I took off and headed to OSH. About 1.5 hours out, over
Pennsylvania, one of the EI's started acting up with the same symptoms
as the first bad EI - slightly elevated CHT's, timing off a bit,
slightly lower power. I navigated from airport to airport, staying as
high as was necessary for glide distance, and made it to OSH in 6.5
hours - about 5 after the EI failure. At OSH, I removed the bad EI
and took it, along with the other two failed units, to the Emagair
booth at OSH. We disassembled the units and found that all three had
had catastrophic mechanical failures inside that caused them to not be
able to hold timing to any extent at all.

Emagair stated that they had not had any failures other than mine of
this type, but agreed that this was a design failure. They attributed
the failure to excessive vibration caused in some way by my engine,
and this plays back to the wear on the removed EI drive gears that Ken
Miller and I had seen two years previously. Emagair believed that
there was some strange thing going on in my engine that was causing
excessive vibration, which beat up the gears and which caused the
catastrophic failure of the sensor magnet holder that I had occur

three times.

I told them that I just needed to fly 11.5 hours more to get home to
Tehachapi, and that the plane would be grounded (which it is) for an
engine teardown. They did a temporary repair on two of the EI's,
which, along with the one in the plane that was still working, gave me
three to use for the 11.5 hour flight(s). When I left OSH a couple of
days later, I determined that I would also change my flight
characteristics to see if I could lessen the stress on the EI's - I
never let the RPM's exceed 2500, either in climb or cruise, and I
climbed at 140 mph to ensure excessive cooling to the EI. Since the
examination of the failed units had pointed to heat and vibration as
being the cause of the failures (mechanical - NOT electrical), I
wanted to change the heat and vibration signatures of my flying.

I was able to fly from OSH to TSP, with one stop in Tucumcari, NM,
without any further failures. The plane is grounded and is coming
apart; the EI's have been removed and returned, and I've got my refund.
So what's happening here? As Mr. Cottner and Mr. Read have stated,
the Pmag/Emag units lose timing information, firing at arbitrary and
sometimes random times. Clearly, this screws up the workings of the
engine, sometimes to the point of having no power whatsoever. Mr.
Cottner had four failures and lost his airplane because of this
failure mode - Mr. Read had to make a precautionary landing, and I had
three failures and one precautionary landing.

Emagair has issued a SB on both the 113 and 114 units. If you recall,
I had timing issues with my 113 units as well. They have instituted a
"fix" for the issue, notwithstanding that the 114 mechanical redesign
was in part already a "fix" for the problems with the 113 versions.

The Emagair units use a small magnet and a hall effect sensor to
determine crankshaft position. It's an ingenious solution, because it
uses a sensor that can determine crank position within 1 degree, not
just when at TDC or within 10 - 30 degrees, as some other EI's do.
However, the mounting of the sensor magnet has been flawed from
version 113 onward. In version 113, the magnet was epoxied into a
metal cup at the end of a shaft. The other end of the shaft had the
magneto gear on it and was in intimate contact with the accessory case
gears inside the engine, along with the engine oil. This guaranteed
that the shaft would get just about as hot as the oil in the accessory
case - about 200 F, if not more.

Due to the very thin bond line of the epoxy holding the magnet in the
cup and the differential CTE's (coefficients of thermal expansion) of
the magnet and cup, the thermal stresses in the epoxy can be very
large, cracking the epoxy. This would allow the magnet to rotate,
thereby losing positional accuracy and timing.

After having this failure mode pointed out to them (by me) a year and
a half ago, and after having refused my offers to assist them in
redesigning the mechanical portion of the units gratis (I am a
mechanical engineer with 27 years of experience), Emagair, with an EE
but no ME on staff, redesigned the magnet holding portion of the units
for the version 114's. They soldered the magnet into a large brass
holder, and then glued the holder onto the same shaft that the cup had
previously been attached to. They then added two locktited set screws
to the holder which applied force to the shaft. There was no flat on
the shaft where the set screws touched it.

This "fix" was far worse than the disease it was attempting to solve,
and is the root cause of the horrible performance of the version 114's
under heat and vibration loading. Now that the mass of the brass
holder has been made much larger than the mass of the magnet alone,
the stresses in the glued bond-line are far higher than previously,
and under heat and vibration is guaranteed to fail eventually. The
set screws do absolutely nothing, since the CTE of brass is much
higher than the CTE of the steel shaft, so as the system gets hot, the
set screws don't even touch the shaft. Failure of the glue bond line
is sufficient to cause the holder to be able to rotate, with the same
mis-timing issues as with a magnet disbond in the version 113 units.

Although Emagair has issued an SB, describing a "fix", I do not have
ANY confidence in this "fix"'s actually working in the long term. As
with Mr. Cotner's warning, I don't believe that the keyway and
roll-pin are anything resembling an adequate solution to the magnet
mounting problem, which is obviously NOT specific to my engine and/or
installation. As more hours are put on these units (I fly 120
hours/year - more than twice the homebuilt average), more will fail,
and I have no confidence that this fix will substantially change this
situation.

Recommendations:

My recommendations, based on my opinions and my examination of MANY
Emagair unit disassemblies are these:

1) If you are flying with a version 113 or 114 product from Emagair,
ground your plane immediately and remove the units. Do NOT fly with
them, or with the "fix" described in the SB. It will work for a
while, but for how long?

2) If you have a unit that you have purchased but haven't used yet,
return it for a refund - do NOT put it on your aircraft and fly it.

3) If you were considering Emagair products for your engine, consider
something else - do NOT purchase one and put in on your aircraft.

When Emagair have hired a competent mechanical engineering firm to
redesign their systems, have FULLY tested the units under O-360 type
vibration loads for thousands of hours, and publicly published the
results, THEN in may be appropriate to consider these units. Until
then, it is not.


If Mr. Cotner, Mr. Read, and my experiences with these units put
Emagair out of business, and it costs some of you the opportunity to
get a refund on your units, I'm sorry for that, but Mr. Cotner was
lucky, and relying on luck to keep people alive is not acceptable.


Everything that I have written here is either my personal experience,
my opinion, or my recommendation based on my opinion.


I know that many of you are saying (to yourselves or to others) "I
told you so", and you're right - you told me so, but my desire for
Emagair to succeed overrode what should have been enough evidence to
the contrary. Feel free to write me with "I told you so" messages, if
it makes you feel better.

I'm happy to address any issues, comments, or questions that anyone
may have. Since Emagair never responded to my entreaties to sign an
non-disclosure agreement with them, I do not have any responsibility
not to explain the inner workings of the units or the problems therein.

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE - distribute these messages (and Mr. Cotner's
and Mr. Read's) to any and all aviation related mailing lists, for a,
and printed newsletters.

(This is not my experience but that of an Engineer I have met and trust.
I was ready to order an E-Mag to replace my faulty Lightspeed but will
now be looking at the Jeff Rose system) Good luck out there with these
ignitions. They are great if you have no problems and miserable when
you do!

[smithhb]

Mike,

I have been following this story and want to point out that it is only one side to the story. The reason it was censored on the VAF was because the author ended his diatribe with a "slam" against E-Mags and the company. We need hold our emotions until an investigation is completed.

While there are documented cases of individuals who have experienced problems with their emags/pmags, there are hundreds of others who have seen no problems after 100's of flight hours.

It is also important to note that Rosen, Bendix and Lightspeed have had their share of problems as well. The goal of any cutting-edge company is to investigate the problems as they occur and develop fixes. This is what E-mag has done as depicted in their Service Bulletin http://emagair.com/Service%20Notes.htm

[bullojm1]

Bret-

I agree completely that there is some truth to the story, and then in the end the author slammed the company. However, I do think it's worthwhile for potential emagair customers to be informed to peoples experiences. One thing I always look for when shopping around for new products (aviation and non-aviation related) is the reviews by users. Now, just because I read one negative review when there could be many positive reviews doesn't mean I won't buy the product.

I am still considering a PMAG for my bird, even after reading this story. Instead of being drawn away from the emag solution by their multiple failures, I was more impressed with how EmagAir was working with the author of this story, shipping him new mags all the time. They seem to be very dedicated to their product and ensuring its success.

I just don't think this story should be pushed into the back corner and ignored.

[N941WR]

This was posted briefly on the "other" forum and then censored out. I feel this is something current and potential emag/pmag customers should know. It seems scary to how many failures this gentleman encountered with the emagair products.

...
Recommendations:

My recommendations, based on my opinions and my examination of MANY
Emagair unit disassemblies are these:

1) If you are flying with a version 113 or 114 product from Emagair,
ground your plane immediately and remove the units. Do NOT fly with
them, or with the "fix" described in the SB. It will work for a
while, but for how long?

2) If you have a unit that you have purchased but haven't used yet,
return it for a refund - do NOT put it on your aircraft and fly it.

3) If you were considering Emagair products for your engine, consider
something else - do NOT purchase one and put in on your aircraft.

When Emagair have hired a competent mechanical engineering firm to
redesign their systems, have FULLY tested the units under O-360 type
vibration loads for thousands of hours, and publicly published the
results, THEN in may be appropriate to consider these units. Until
then, it is not.


If Mr. Cotner, Mr. Read, and my experiences with these units put
Emagair out of business, and it costs some of you the opportunity to
get a refund on your units, I'm sorry for that, but Mr. Cotner was
lucky, and relying on luck to keep people alive is not acceptable.

...
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE - distribute these messages (and Mr. Cotner's
and Mr. Read's) to any and all aviation related mailing lists, for a,
and printed newsletters.

...

It sure sounds a lot like some emails I get. Makes me wonder if I should check Snopes.com to find out if it is real.

Let me see, the guy was an early adopter of an experimental ignition system. He had some problems with, dumped the early product, went back for a later version, continued to have a problem but continued to fly his plane when he knew he had a bag ignition system. Not too good!

Then he talks about how they are going to fail because they have an EE not an ME work on the part in question. Ok, he makes some good points here but since I have never looked inside one of my two P-mags, I can't tell you if this it total BS or not. I did send both my P-mags back for magnet holder upgrade he described and haven't had an issue with them.

I fully expect there to be some development issues with these things as I'm sure Light Speed and the others had when they first came on the market.

It sounds to me that the guy who wrote this is paying for an engine overhaul and wants to blame Emagair. When in reality, if he had landed when he first experienced a problem, addressed the ignition then, he probably wouldn't be in the middle of an overhaul.

If it were me, I would be pissed but I would also not go around telling everyone to pass along a note describing how the E/Pmags are going to kill them, like some spam letter.

Emagair is doing the right thing by notifying people there is a problem and offering to fix the E/P-mags for free. This is much better than any of the other ignition manufactures would do, certified or experimental.

Bill

PS. I now have 193 hours on my P-mags. On my 2nd flight I did have a lost timing problem, and got on the ground ASAP. I sent them in for a software upgrade and the problem went away and has never returned.

PPS. I know of at least two P-mag installations that had issues as a result of how they were installed. It seams everyone wants to install them slightly differently than what is recommended by Emagair. Bob K's wiring diagrams probably had something to do with this. I'm sure some of the E/Pmag issues we have read about in other posts are a result of installtion errors. (Bad crimps, undersized wires, lack of cooling tubes, etc.)

[smithhb]

Hey Bill,

I still wonder what was causing the vibration on his plane that would cause multiple E-Mag failures. You are right, when he decided to take off with one working mag, I began to question his decision-making skills.

[bullojm1]

when he decided to take off with one working mag, I began to question his decision-making skills.

Yeah, no doubt. When I read that, I got a little scared for the guys ability to make a safe flight. What was worse was he took his son for a ride using only one mag for takeoff. I don't think this guy will win any father of the year awards.

However, besides all of the poor decisions this guy made, there seems to be a vibration issue that caused his failures. That is the main thing I got out of the story.

[Spike]

Hey Mike,

Can you please edit your first post and attribute your quotation to the person that wrote it? Id also like you to put a date on when it was posted. Thanx.

Don't forget that I am open to vendors responding, etc. I am not a fan of direct advertising, but vendors are welcome to respond to product questions, etc.

John

[bullojm1]

Can you please edit your first post and attribute your quotation to the person that wrote it? Id also like you to put a date on when it was posted. Thanx.

No problem...done!

[Spike]

Thanx.

[N941WR]

Hey Bill,

I still wonder what was causing the vibration on his plane that would cause multiple E-Mag failures. You are right, when he decided to take off with one working mag, I began to question his decision-making skills.

The vibration could be caused by any number of things; the prop, one oversized piston (+.010), the combination of a slightly heavy but in spec connecting rod, piston, etc., a bad plug, bad plug wire, you name it.

My question is this, if he had a bad vibration, why didn't he solve that problem? A vibration bad enough to cause the failure in the P-mag drive shaft will probably crack other things such as the exhaust (fire!), alternator bracket, baffles, just about everything.

This really brings into question his decision making skills, as you said Bret.

[N941WR]

In doing some research on the issue, this is total BS!

The guy had a problem with earl E/P-mags, took them off, replaced them with a standard magneto, that lasted 1.5 years, he took that off and replaced it with a new P-mag. Something is really wrong here.

It turns out the guy's engine chewed up the early E/P-mag, a regular magneto, and the P-mag and now he is pissed at Emagair? I don't think so.

This goes way beyond the early software glitches, since fixed, that caused the E/P-mag to lose their timing marks.

I was able to find out that the guy had been told to address his engine/accessory case issue then worry about the ignition problem. Apparently he ignored this good advice and now wants to blame someone else.

I don't know this guy but I do know Brad and Tom and they stand behind their product. So much so they are offering free upgrades to anyone who sends in their units. Good luck getting a free upgrade on a regular magneto.

Sorry to babble on about this, but these guys are doing a great job with a great product and I don't feel the attacks on them are warranted.

BTW, here is a note from Bob Nuckolls about this issue:

--> AeroElectric-List message posted by: "Robert L. Nuckolls, III" <nuckolls.bob@cox.net>

I've been out of town for a couple of days an
we don't have handy access to e-mail set up yet
in M.L.

Some thoughts on the current e-mag kerfuffle:

I spoke at length with Brad at Emagair yesterday.
He was quite willing to "bare his soul" as it were
and made me privy to some facts that will probably
never be put out for public consumption. But suffice
it to say the following:

The unique failure mode that began this thread is
an rare event in the constellation of delivered
product. It involves a combination of things, some
of which may never be fully quantified because
the combination is unique to the as-installed system.

Theses are exceedingly difficult to access for
measurement, analysis and deduction of root cause.
95% of all my experiences in such matters have shown
that the fastest route to customer satisfaction is
to add robustness by redesign. After all, how difficult
is it to get a grip on an aspirin sized magnet?

The problem is centered on a limited segment of
production as outlined in this document published
on Emag's website:

http://emagair.com/E-MAG%20Service%20Bulletin%203.pdf

The mechanical issues surrounding attachment of the
position sensor magnet have been addressed and the
new attach methodology has been implemented in production,
all units returned for any kind of service are being
upgraded. Details of the new magnet mount are
shown here:

http://emagair.com/sensor%20SB.htm

There are countless situations in the history of emerging
technologies that progress is measured in more-steps-forward-
than-steps-back. We rely on lessons learned, sifting
of the simple-ideas for optimum design, test to the best
of our ability and then go to market. Ultimate success
or failure is driven by the combination of technical
prowess, manufacturing skill and honorable behavior in the
marketplace.

It's a mystery as to why a small number of installations
have experienced a cluster of failures. After all, this
configuration has been in the marketplace for over 13
months but the cluster of failures surfaced in the past
few months. As I outlined above, it's probably not in the
stars that a detailed investigation will or even can
be conducted to ascertain the combination of stresses and
limits that produced the failures.

There are individuals who have complained that their offered
expertise and talents for deducing root cause and/or remedy
were rebuffed. Any of you that have been in business will
understand that it is not a good idea to engage individuals
for problem solving that have too many dogs in the hunt.
The fact that capable and perhaps very useful talents were
not utilized is not evidence of irresponsible or dishonorable
behavior on the part of Emag.

There are individuals who for whatever reasons will suggest
there is great cause for contemplation, discussion and perhaps
even a call to action for dealing with such matters. The discussions
have already filled many keyboard-hours of participants on
the 'net. A common thread that runs through much of the
discussions I've read is the lack of data from original
sources on what happened and what's being done to fix it.

If anyone has personal concerns, call Emag and talk to
Brad or Tom. I've visited their facility and have exchanged
email and telephone conversations with them. I have no
reason to believe they're not exercising due diligence in
application of appropriate skills, talent and technology
to address a "step backwards" in the evolution of their
product. I also find no evidence of dishonorable behavior
on their part.

Finally, I'll remind readers of this List of a suggestion
I made some years ago as the Emag products first emerged.
When you buy an engine with mags, you're not likely to
get much if any rebate for leaving the mags off. Given
that 90+ percent of performance gains for EI come with
the installation of but one system, how about running one
of your mags in parallel with one Emag? When the first
mag craps, put the second mag on. Don't install dual Emags
until you've "used up" both mags.

This philosophy will allow you to exploit performance
gains offered while insulting yourself from the inevitable
effects of steps-back during the development of any
product. This mixed-technology approach to exemplary
system reliability is a tried and proven technique.

I'm not suggesting that discussions on this topic should not
continue. I do suggest that for individuals who are
gravely concerned about their own projects AVOID making a
decision based on 'net-babble. Yes, until you access
original-source-data or you are reading the analysis from
a learned writer that has access to original-source-data,
it's ALL 'net-babble.

Keep in mind too that folks who have experienced failures are
not sources of original data that goes beyond the facts of their
experience. Someone who suffers a stroke may have a great deal to
say about their experience without knowing a thing about the
simple-ideas that caused it. Their telling of the story has the
effect of raising fear of stroke on the part of listeners . . .
but adds nothing to an understanding of how risk for a similar
experience can be reduced.

Call Emag and if push comes to shove, run a Magneto/Emag combination
for awhile. Bottom line is that the sky is not falling.

Bob . . .

[Rockyjs]

I purchased a pair of 114 PMAGS in Mid-August. I was waiting to fly off phase I before installing. They are sitting in the box as a write. When Emagair intiated their SB, I was tempted to pack them up and send them in for a refund. I decided to wait and see what new wrinkles came up the last few weeks. I have Slicks that need yet another inspection at 50 hours which is coming up soon. I'm not an engineer, but when I look at the PMAGS I see a high quality modern ignition component. Their SB retrofit appears to be valid. Therefore, I have decided to send my PMAGS in for an upgrade and install them when they return. It seems that there have been some isolated failures. Some have been PMAG related (magnets and software), some airframe (vibration) and some installation errors. My Slick mags, haven't given me any warm fuzzy feelings. The company has been slow to acknowledge and produce a fix to their carbon brush and distributor block problem on their mags that affects there products all the way back to September 2004. Just my Opinion