Century III Autopilot Troubleshooter Here?

[wilkersk]

Any experts on this system as installed on a Commander 114B?

With roll/heading engaged it rolls right. Owner thinks I'm an expert on all things avionics, even though I've told him I'm not even 100% sure where the roll servo is on his airplane. Now, I'm about to try and troubleshoot.

 

[Tom J]

You might reach out to Bob Weber, webairconsulting.com. He's very good with the older, rate based AP's and maybe able to offer some relatively easy troubleshooting steps.
Not 114 specific, but verify rigging and the outputs from the gyro instruments. AI and DG both feed the Century contoller.

 

[Jim K]

The one in my Lance was doing that. After a lot of fooling around, we found a loose wire/poor connection in one of the connectors. It's been long enough now I can't remember where exactly. Iirc the symptom was it would go to full right full as soon as you turned it on, unless you turned the to control knob to full left first, then it would stay centered.

I believe https://www.autopilotscentral.com/ in Tulsa are the experts and can still rebuild the boxes and servos. I'm sure they could tell you where to look.

In my case, it quit working again a few months later, and we discovered that the bearings were gone out of the servos. At that point it felt like throwing good money after bad, so I fixed it by giving $20k to garmin.

 

[bonefishpete]

Had a C3 in a mooney. Did the same thing. Pulled the transistor board out and cleaned the gold contacts with rubber eraser and contact cleaner. They were troublesome some 30 years ago I suspect that hasn’t changed.

 

[3393RP]

Had a C3 in a mooney. Did the same thing. Pulled the transistor board out and cleaned the gold contacts with rubber eraser and contact cleaner. They were troublesome some 30 years ago I suspect that hasn’t changed.

The pencil eraser was an important tool in the TTL days! I always had a Pink Pearl or two in my field backpack.

 

[krispetersen4]

Bevan aviation is really helpful with Century APs