My engine quit on touchdown tonight (input from Cirrus pilots welcomed)

Clark1961 said:
I'd say that is an invalid conclusion on your part then. If the engine always ran rough then I would agree with you. Bryan did not say the engine always ran rough. A slight bit of unstable operation at low power can be very difficult to recreate in a shop. How many hours of shop time do you want to pay for just to hear "could not duplicate"? Furthermore you have no evidence that his maintenance folks do not check the fuel setup annually as recommended by Continental. In short there is not enough information to conclude neglect. You are guessing and doing it in a negative way.
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I guess if you chose to ignore it and not have it diagnosed, the number of you expect to expend is zero, but there are procedures to calibrate the injection system and a simple log book search will tell you how low it has been since that occurred. It is a very common procedure.

Further more, an injected engine with tuned intake and exhaust is a very smooth running engine and hickups are not the way this engine should run. An engine that stops on short final is unairworthy, my life is worth more than shop hours, end of debate.
 
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Guys, all this about the fuel system does not match the symptoms. Skip the electrical items. There are a few basic items dealing with the engine the OP stated:
1. Rough engine in pattern at low power
2. Engine cut off on landing
3. The plane starts and idle's fine and taxi back to parking just fine
4. He was NOT full rich at landing
5. Engine restart just fine on the ground, and also taxied back to parking just fine.

Checking fuel flow is easy, and should be done to eliminate it. However, this is not likely to be a factor, reason is the engine started up just fine after turn off the runway.
When the engine is running lean, it is harder on the ignition system. Therefore, I would suspect one of two things. Either the OP was too lean, or the ignition is weak. Ignition being weak could be because of spark plugs (fouled, old...), bad timing, or just could be magnetos are not providing a strong enough spark.

Tim
 
tspear said:
When did the engine stop on landing? How fast was the plane moving? If the plane was still moving at a fast clip, it will likely not be idle settings. The reason is the airspeed will still be pushing the prop keeping the engine speed above idle. In addition, when the plane started right up after leaving the runway, you likely went to idle multiple times as you taxied, again offering evidence that this is not likely a cause.
The first place I would check is the fuel flow, you may be over rich, and I would check this first because it is easy to check.
What I suspect is actually weak mags, which were overcome by the rich fuel condition.

The alternator issue is a red herring in terms of the engine cutting off. Chase that as a separate issue.

Good luck,

Tim
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Engine stopped while I was going slow. I would estimate 50 kts. I fly to the numbers at 80 and hold it off until it quits flying which should be around ~59 kts. The plane was firmly planted when it quit. Maybe I was just too lean and I am making an issue where there is not one. I just linked this with the ALT1 Anomaly and the low voltage alert just before the engine stopped. Maybe the engine had stopped and that is what caused the low voltage alert. If so, the thing to research is the ALT1 alert I got in cruise.
 
I do think 2 things happened and I turned them into 1
 
Clip4 said:
I guess if you chose to ignore it and not have it diagnosed, the number of you expect to expend is zero, but there are procedures to calibrate the injection system and a simple log book search will tell you how low it has been since that occurred. It is a very common procedure.

Further more, an injected engine with tuned intake and exhaust is a very smooth running engine and hickups are not the way this engine should run. An engine that stops on short final is unairworthy, end of debate.
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You have claimed neglect. You have not and cannot proven neglect. Now you change your story to state the aircraft is not airworthy and use a made up condition to support that claim. What is next?
 
Clip4 said:
TThe engine issue is probably lack of maintenance and fuel injection system has not been adjusted in a long time.
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Yea @SixPapaCharlie, you asked what the cause of your issue is, and Clip4 has found the reason- your overall maintenance negligence. Any other questions? :biggrin:

Jeeze man the guy came for advice, not accusations.

Anyways- moving on to constructive critque/questions- do you do an idle check as part of your run-up procedure? If so have you noticed this "hiccup" then? If not is there any difference in engine settings when you do your idle check than when you flew yesterday?

I wonder if it is just a throttle setting where it is not adjusted properly for idle operations.

My guess is that like others have said it is 2 issues here.

Please keep us posted what mx says.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
Engine stopped while I was going slow. I would estimate 50 kts. I fly to the numbers at 80 and hold it off until it quits flying which should be around ~59 kts. The plane was firmly planted when it quit. Maybe I was just too lean and I am making an issue where there is not one. I just linked this with the ALT1 Anomaly and the low voltage alert just before the engine stopped. Maybe the engine had stopped and that is what caused the low voltage alert. If so, the thing to research is the ALT1 alert I got in cruise.
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I forget the technique, but you can test the ignition system on the ground by running the engine up and then leaning aggressively, and then switching mags. BEFORE you do this, look into it careful, you can damage the exhaust system on a restart if the engine starts to die.

Good luck on the electrical, I know enough about how it works to save my but, not diagnose anything.

Tim
 
Bryan mine did this (the quitting on roll-out part) until I did this. Night and day now. (IO520)
The alt warning lights etc is a separate problem.
 

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SixPapaCharlie said:
I'm going to settle out of court for an undisclosed sum of money.
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All I can say is it's a darn good thing you bought another airplane. It's good to have one for flyin' and one for fixin'. ;)
 
I have to have recurrent training every year for my pressurized plane. When we did a engine out sim couple months ago my trainer kept wanting to blip the throttle with little power ever so often. I asked what she was doing and she said the engine will foul if you don't when you have at idle on long decent. I said naw it never dies.( not thinking of the fact most decents are at 23 mp or so). She said okay. So after 16 min of no power and engine out sim landing, sure enough turning off runway it died. She said Told you so, they all do that.
 
mtnflyr said:
Interesting. The poh for the 20 I fly says to be full rich on mixture. During descent it is "as required"

And I've never seen alt1. Only alt2 when I slow down after landing.
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IO360ES in SR20 has an altitude-compensating fuel pump, so you always takeoff and climb full rich. SR22 is different.
 
This is my first post to POA. I claim not to be an expert at anything. I've flown 5 different Cirruses, 2-22, 2-20 and a TN. In the first 22 I flew, if you pull the throttle all the way back to idle, it would die on the runway. None of the other planes would do that. So my normal now is to never pull back to idle completely. I've probably adopted this practice to all the other planes. When I'm about to shut down after a mag check and before fuel shut off, I'll bring the plane to full idle and it feels like it'll die but I've never let it completely die because I immediately go to fuel shut off. I'm flying this afternoon and I'll go to idle and see what it does.

I've had the 22 die on the runway when I land and forget to go to full rich and fuel pump on prior to landing.

Van
 
Interesting observation you share Van. Do you routinely do an idle check as part of a run-up?

And welcome to POA.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
IHave you ever gotten an ALT1 before?
2 is one I see all the time so I am not overly concerned about that one.
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Yes. I've had two alternators fail.

One was having issues for a while, but the owner didn't believe it; it finally gave up. Fortunately on the ground on a Friday; which mean the maintenance shop was open. We visited our daughter the day before for a Thursday night football game. Another benefit was there was a shop in Louisville (1 hour drive away) that rebuilds alternators and they had one (or more) in stock.

The other happened in the air. It was a bad flying day for me. First plane wouldn't start, even with a power cart. Oddly the ALT1 light didn't stay steady on, which it should with a dead alternator, but I could see the power was dropping. It got me where I was going, wasn't much further. Got a rental vehicle and drove back.

Oh wait, there was a third alternator failure. But that was on a Baron, so I had two full alternators, so not a big deal. That alternator had just been replaced during the annual; both were replaced in annual. It ran fine until up in cruise and then blew a fuse (in the cowl with the engine). They replaced the fuse and it did it again. Then the alternator was replaced and it has been fine since.
 
Clark1961 said:
Interesting observation you share Van. Do you routinely do an idle check as part of a run-up?

And welcome to POA.
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No, I don't do an idle check, it's not on the checklist and the checklist only says reduce rpms to 1000 after the run-up.
 
vanman said:
This is my first post to POA. I claim not to be an expert at anything. I've flown 5 different Cirruses, 2-22, 2-20 and a TN. In the first 22 I flew, if you pull the throttle all the way back to idle, it would die on the runway. None of the other planes would do that. So my normal now is to never pull back to idle completely. I've probably adopted this practice to all the other planes. When I'm about to shut down after a mag check and before fuel shut off, I'll bring the plane to full idle and it feels like it'll die but I've never let it completely die because I immediately go to fuel shut off. I'm flying this afternoon and I'll go to idle and see what it does.

I've had the 22 die on the runway when I land and forget to go to full rich and fuel pump on prior to landing.

Van
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An SR22 that has the injection system properly calibrated does not die when you reduce the power to idle.
 
I just landed in a G2 SR22. When I pulled back to my idle over the numbers to land, it was 1000 rpm. When I came to a stop at the FBO, I pulled all the way back to idle and it was 750 rpm. It did not die. When I turned the fuel pump off at full idle, it did not die (the mixture was at full rich). It didn't sound great (like if it were slightly less rpm then it would die) and I wouldn't like to land like that.

So 6PC, what numbers do you have at idle (less than 750 rpm?)?
 
mtnflyr said:
Interesting. What density altitude were you at? temperature?

My guess is the idle is set far to low. I always get alt 2, sometimes sbus warning after I touch down while I'm getting slow to turn off the runway. But never a rough engine. Winter or summertime.

Isn't your engine fuel injected? Is it possible when you leaned for cruise you never went back to full rich for landing and starved the engine?
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I also think the idle is set too low.
 
Vapor lock maybe? I've flown a DA40 that ran hot on the ground, and would not idle at normal idle speed on a hot day, even with the boost pump on. In any case, it sounds like two separate issues. Or not. Maybe your engine actually quit in the air, and windmilled or made partial power on final, causing low alternator output issues.
 
Sac Arrow said:
Vapor lock maybe? I've flown a DA40 that ran hot on the ground, and would not idle at normal idle speed on a hot day, even with the boost pump on. In any case, it sounds like two separate issues. Or not. Maybe your engine actually quit in the air, and windmilled or made partial power on final, causing low alternator output issues.
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You wouldn't get low alternator output from that unless the RPM was low.
 
Sac Arrow said:
Correct. To that was what I was alluding.
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The one time I suspect this happened to me (high DA, flooded IO360 engine), the engine ran normal RPM and quite smoothly until the roundout. Then, it quit. No problem with any of the electrics, but the engine vapor locked rather quickly and I had to let it cool for an hour to get it restarted.
 
Clip4 said:
Oh, does you car quit running when you get off the interstate or pull up to a traffic light too?
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My old '82 Accord did that all the time. I cleaned the crap out of the carburetor, had the idle set higher, etc. Kept doing it. . . .
 
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spiderweb said:
My old '92 Accord did that all the time. I cleaned the crap out of the carburetor, had the idle set higher, etc. Kept doing it. . . .
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I have a 92 accord that I still drive. Actually my kids drive it now. We have 3 kids and each one of them has wrecked it (all rear ended someone). Amazingly, the a/c still works in it. It starts right up everyday.
 
vanman said:
I have a 92 accord that I still drive. Actually my kids drive it now. We have 3 kids and each one of them has wrecked it (all rear ended someone). Amazingly, the a/c still works in it. It starts right up everyday.
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That's amazing. You would think after three front end collisions, at some point you would lose your cool.
 
Whoops--mine was an '82 Accord. (No carb by '92). I'll correct that post now. . . .
 
By the way, if you have a choice on an East-West runway, the Eötvös effect favors landing towards the West.
 
spiderweb said:
Whoops--mine was an '82 Accord. (No carb by '92). I'll correct that post now. . . .
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I was gonna say, my parents' 1990 Accord was fuel injected, but I'm not a car guru so I thought I'd keep my mouth shut. ;)

I loved that car - learned to drive in it. Only failing was those ridiculous automatic seatbelts!
 
kayoh190 said:
I was gonna say, my parents' 1990 Accord was fuel injected, but I'm not a car guru so I thought I'd keep my mouth shut. ;)

I loved that car - learned to drive in it. Only failing was those ridiculous automatic seatbelts!
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I learned to drive in a, errr, umm, 50's chevy pickup. I think it was chevy...anyway it was a pickup and everything was metal except maybe the gearshift knob. Then I had to teach my older brothers how to drive by riding through their crashes and making them feel like the stupid fools they were.

Anyway, is it even possible to learn to drive in a newer car? I mean it doesn't have a choke much less a clutch. This is concerning...
 
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