New owners: how is the quality and fit-and-finish of your recently (last 2-3 months) delivered airplanes? How much touch-up and how many fix-its were required after the 1st walkaround/acceptance flight/training flights?
Kevin and I must think along the same lines. It is impossible for early Cirrus owners to give us too many PIREPS. Walt, Dave Katz, et. al. . . . keep on writing!
New owners: how is the quality and fit-and-finish of your recently (last 2-3 months) delivered airplanes? How much touch-up and how many fix-its were required after the 1st walkaround/acceptance flight/training flights?
New owners: how is the quality and fit-and-finish of your recently (last 2-3 months) delivered airplanes? How much touch-up and how many fix-its were required after the 1st walkaround/acceptance flight/training flights?
I’ve been reticent to air any of my issues for fear of folks getting overly concerned but since you asked (and maybe there’s nothing to be concerned about) here goes.
There were only 2 issues when I picked up #1056 nearly 4 months back. The first delayed my delivery a day or 2. When the test pilots flew with the autopilot on alt. hold, any transmitting/keying of the #2 Garmin radio caused an uncommanded climb. CD was well aware of the problem before I arrived and arranged to have techs at the factory from STEC and Garmin; after a couple of days they figured it out and fixed it.
The only problem that came up on the acceptance flight was a minor one having to do with the fresh air vents up front. Somehow the hose that carries the air to the eyelets was crimped - a simple fix.
Post delivery has seen a number of issues crop up, most minor irritants, with the exception of a failed (stuck) prop controller. Poor/incomplete diagnosis by the local mechanic resulted in my being grounded for 3 weeks. Source of the problem was heat damage from one of the exhaust manifold pipes to the controller cable. Local guy installed a shield between the new cable and the heat source to prevent recurrence.
Avionics troubles have included the following: xponder failure, GNS 430 and Arnav that don’t auto-dim, and a really weird one (still not fixed), my panel lights go dim when I transmit on the #1 radio. Avionics techs at the authorized Cirrus service center claim its due to insufficient groundplane forward of the #1 (roof) antenna. I’m told this type of problem is endemic to “plastic airplanes”.
Other minor bugs have included things like the pilot’s side armrest falling off. Its velcroe’d on and apparently was not installed correctly at the factory. And of course I’ve had the obligatory landing light failure as well as the loss of my wingtip recognition lights (both sides) on the way home from the factory. I also had a minor problem with the nosegear - I think the A&P called it a strut fairing hinge pin? that was scraping against the nosewheel fairing. I’ve had 2 or 3 other minor issues but enough is enough.
In spite of these irritants (and if I ignore the fact that the empty weight is 175 lbs heavier than when I ordered), overall I’m thrilled with the airplane. Since I’ve never owned an aircraft before I have no basis to judge whether Cirrus’ QA is better or worse than anybody else. At this point I guess I’d give them a B on their report card, but an A for effort:)
An interesting side note… I flew from San Francisco to the LA basin a few weeks ago with a friend in his new B36TC Jaguar Edition (with about 80 hours). While we were climbing out, the cover on the co-pilot’s yoke - made of Burl wood - fell into my lap. The only thing that was holding it was Velcro which was not proper placed or glued.
And he paid more than double our outlay!
New owners: how is the quality and fit-and-finish of your recently (last 2-3 months) delivered airplanes? How much touch-up and how many fix-its were required after the 1st walkaround/acceptance flight/training flights?
Kevin and I must think along the same lines. It is impossible for early Cirrus owners to give us too many PIREPS. Walt, Dave Katz, et. al. . . . keep on writing!
OK, if you insist…
Mine’s been tight and happy. The plane has 89.5
hours on it (as of 20 minutes ago; we tried to go see the Very Large Array, as featured in “Contact,” but we ran out of daylight.) I’ve had two oil changes, and had the baggage door adjusted a bit (it was sagging enough so that the stripes didn’t line up any longer.) The only remaining irritant is that the HSI is about 5 times brighter than anything else at night; I’m guessing that they were off by one pin when they wired it and hooked it to the 14V lighting instead. I haven’t been willing to give it up long enough for them to take a look at it. I’ll probably pull out my trusty DMM and see how it was wired.
There was a recent SB that I had an inspection done for (on Friday). Apparently one of the manufacturing guys nicked some horizontal stabs with the edge of the sanding disk while sanding the empennage, and then used bondo to fill the nicks, rather than using proper composite repair techniques. Cirrus is flying a tech with an ultrasound machine all over the country to check to check on all of the planes up to #76. The damage isn’t structural, but over the years moisture could work its way in and eventually further damage the skin.
My plane showed minor nicks; now the engineers look at the results and decide whether they’re going to make repairs or leave it alone.
On the scale of things this isn’t too bad, particularly when compared to things like missing rivets in the door frames of new 172s (requiring 50+ hours of labor to repair). Still a happy customer.
So far so good; I’m happy enough to be paying a premium for an early SR22 position. I just can’t get enough of this plane…
Most of you know of the vacuum pump problems so I won’t go there other than to say … systems now seem to be working fine in that department.
N415WM now has about 400 hours and is doing fine. My biggest compliant is the GNS 430 “washing out” in bright sunlight. After flying for as little as 30 to 45 minutes the center of the 430 screen tends to become hard to read. The colors seem to wash out and become whiteish in appearance. Anyone else?
Kevin and I must think along the same lines. It is impossible for early Cirrus owners to give us too many PIREPS. Walt, Dave Katz, et. al. . . . keep on writing!
OK, if you insist…
Mine’s been tight and happy. The plane has 89.5
hours on it (as of 20 minutes ago; we tried to go see the Very Large Array, as featured in “Contact,” but we ran out of daylight.) I’ve had two oil changes, and had the baggage door adjusted a bit (it was sagging enough so that the stripes didn’t line up any longer.) I’m guessing that they were off by one pin when they wired it and hooked it to the 14V lighting instead. I haven’t been willing to give it up long enough for them to take a look at it. I’ll probably pull out my trusty DMM and see how it was wired.
There was a recent SB that I had an inspection done for (on Friday). Apparently one of the manufacturing guys nicked some horizontal stabs with the edge of the sanding disk while sanding the empennage, and then used bondo to fill the nicks, rather than using proper composite repair techniques. Cirrus is flying a tech with an ultrasound machine all over the country to check to check on all of the planes up to #76. The damage isn’t structural, but over the years moisture could work its way in and eventually further damage the skin.
My plane showed minor nicks; now the engineers look at the results and decide whether they’re going to make repairs or leave it alone.
On the scale of things this isn’t too bad, particularly when compared to things like missing rivets in the door frames of new 172s (requiring 50+ hours of labor to repair). Still a happy customer.
So far so good; I’m happy enough to be paying a premium for an early SR22 position. I just can’t get enough of this plane…
My list is as follows:
While at the factory I had to have some paint touch-up and the landing light had to be replaced.
On the way home from the factory, the CHT gauge was malfunctioning (loose connection.)
Since then, I have had to replace the landing light, the engine driven vacuun pump failed, the CHT gauge is malfunctioning again, and the cover on the co-pilot arm rest is loose. The worst problem I have had is a hideous noise apparently coming from an air leak in the pilot’s door, which has thus far eluded all attempts at being clearly identified.
Most of you know of the vacuum pump problems so I won’t go there other than to say … systems now seem to be working fine in that department.
Tempting fate there Walt!
N415WM now has about 400 hours and is doing fine. My biggest compliant is the GNS 430 “washing out” in bright sunlight.
I’ve seen this too (though only one one of them). It seems to be that the automatic brightness/contrast control goes too far in full sun. If you manually reduce the brightness, the whiteness goes away (and it’s still very readable). It may be able to be adjusted - I should get it checked I suppose.
I’ve also seen the “panel lights dim when com1 keyed” problem, just the other night. Had not noticed it before, but maybe I always used com2 (could not this time, it is out for a software upgrade).
Other failures we’ve had (in 400 hours) are 3 or 4 vacuum pumps, 3 transponders, one COM radio, one flap failure (didn’t stop when coming up, actutator jumped out of thread), one bent pin on the database card socket in the 430, Arnav upgrade required for make Stormscope work, ELT activating when COM2 keyed, doors hard to close (just required lubrication) and various other minor issues.
Oh, and those black strips on the edges of the gear fairings will not stay in place!
Overall, I’d rate the aircraft quality as good to very good, the avionics and vac pump failure rate as disappointing.
An interesting side note… I flew from San Francisco to the LA basin a few weeks ago with a friend in his new B36TC Jaguar Edition (with about 80 hours). While we were climbing out, the cover on the co-pilot’s yoke - made of Burl wood - fell into my lap. The only thing that was holding it was Velcro which was not proper placed or glued.
And he paid more than double our outlay!
Obviously, it was a “Jaguar Edition” which should be a big hint to anyone who’s ever touched a british car. 
I’m expecting that the electrical system is held together by friction fit nubs on the wires, and that the door panels are glued on.