Garmin G1000 Repair Costs / KAP140 AutoPilot

[VORTIME]

Hi there,

Does anyone know what it typically costs to "put stuff right" when something goes wrong with the G1000? Any expeirences? Also, same about the KAP140. Are both devices reliable?

Anyone with a price list of the individual LRUs if you could PM me that would be great.

Tx
VT

[Three Yellows]

Which aircraft?

[VORTIME]

I imagine it's the same for all but specifically DA40.

Ta
VT

[Three Yellows]

OK,

Our DA42 had an autopilot fault from almost day one. It delayed delivery of the a/c to us by a month and when we did get it, the A/P only worked for a couple of flights. Diamond UK had said that the dealer for the A/P (IAE) was too busy to sort it out and so when the Gamston hangars were full of A/P faults the avionics man came from Austria. Anyway within a few days of deliverythe A/P failed again and so we took it to IAE ourselves to get it fixed.

IAE at Cranfield were superb. Fantastic customer support, even though we weren't really a customer. They quickly identified that Diamond's wiping it over with an oily rag wasn't going to be a long term fix. IAE replaced the pitch trim servo and since then the autopilot has been amazing (well compared to the 30 year old one on our old Arrow).

Talk to Garry Joyce at IAE 01234 750661. Garry dealt with Diamond regarding the warranty etc and so no grief for us.

The only problem with Cranfield is the eye watering landing fee, for not much in return.


As for the G1000, I heard a few months ago that not even Garmin UK were authorised to touch the G1000 yet... however that may not be true, but I aim to catch up with them at the aerofair this weekend at Booker as there a few things I'd like to know about the G1000. If you don't catch up with Garmin there, I'll report back on friday.

3Y

[IO540]

I have a different Honeywell autopilot but the costs are very roughly - £10k for the autopilot unit, £1500 for each servo.

You can get exchange deals which are perhaps 1/3 of the above, but you have no choice about whose old junk you get back under the scheme - a 2 year old spotless unit is likely to be replaced with a 15 year old one. The average age of avionics supplied under the exchange scheme is IME ~ 10 years.

The G1000 I don't know anything about but it won't be cheap.

However, on a new plane you should have a warranty, and you can extend this warranty.

After running with one 2-year warranty extension, whose US$4000 cost I did fortunately recover through the failure of one instrument alone, I have made a decision to not buy this anymore since individual instrument failures can be dealt with by going to a repair station such as IAE. It's a bit like private medical insurance - you will (on average) lose money on extended warranties, especially with a hangared plane.