I. E. CGR-30P Engine Monitor PIREPs Please

[MickYoumans]

E. I. CGR-30P Engine Monitor PIREPs Please

My airplane is currently in annual and getting a major engine overhaul. To help me protect my new engine investment I am looking at installing an engine monitor. While comparing various monitors I ran across the Electronics International CGR-30P that looks like a good value and would fit into my tachometer hole. Does anyone have this in their plane? I have looked at the YouTube videos but would love to hear from some actual owners.

http://buy-ei.com/portfolio/cgr-30p-overview/

 

[bkspero]

I have about 4 hrs on my new instal. The good. Tons of capability in a single hole. Tach, cht, egt, fuel flow, oil p, oil t, fuel p, volts, amps, oat and calculated fuel remaining based on fuel flow . Freed up the whole right side of my panel. Interfaces with my 530w GPS to give fuel to next, fuel to dest, fuel at dest, fuel economy, etc. It has both onscreen alerts for out of range readings, and separate yellow and red warning lights for panel mounting. I was worried that it might be hard to read having such a small screen and all that info, but it's so sharp and high contrast that reading is easy. I'm still tuning the fuel flow k factor, so I can't comment on its accuracy. But it uses the standard EI transducer that's been around forever, so I expect it to be good.

Customer service before the sale and after arrival was very good. Quick phone pickup, knowledgeable and patient staff. Easy to update configuration using built in usb.

The bad. Configuration was changed from that in my configuration questionnaire, and they did not review the changes with us as we had been advised they would. Some changes were unavoidable due to regulations. Two were arbitrary. One was a misprogrammed redline that had safety implications. You should carefully read the configuration document that comes with the unit. They provided us with revised configuration files once we told the about the problems.

The actual unit was dead on arrival and it had to be returned to ei for repair. Lost about a week. Seems to be fine now.

I still need to get used to the digital tach. It updates a couple of times per second. But that seems slow to me. I had the same experience with some other's digital tach. Its not unique to this unit.

EI advised install would take 25-30 hrs. It took longer, its impossible to estimate how much. I had some other work done. Plus the shop assigned its least experienced A&P to the install, and he got lots of oversight for which I was charged.

 

[timwinters]

You certainly can't beat E.I.'s customer service. They've replaced items on my engine monitor (including the monitor itself) well past the warranty period.

 

[bkspero]

An update on my experience. The unit continues to operate great. Having all my engine and vacuum information in one spot right in my scan with annunciation for yellow and red range operation is head and shoulders better than the old individual gauges that were out of easy view to the right of the avioncs stack (and with only vacuum having annunciation).

And today the rebate check arrived only couple of weeks after emailing the documents to EI. Great customer service.

 

[AggieMike88]

Pictures? Please?

 

[bkspero]

Here are some photos. Lots of glare on the panel. Compare the LCD CGR-30P to the steam gauges. Showing two screens. One is the 2nd screen (no EGT/CHT bar graphs) shortly after start-up. It contains RPM & Fuel Flow (which are at the top of every screen), AMPS, Volts, Vac, OAT, Flight Time, and Zulu Time. It also shows the highest EGT (bottom left) and highest CHT (bottom right). The 3 rectangular boxes crossing just above the center of the screen are the annunciations for Fuel Pressure, Oil Pressure, and Oil temperature on the first screen. You can see that Oil Temperature is illuminated because it had not yet reached the minimum operating temperature of 75F.

You can also see the small round silver-ringed red and yellow annunciator lights on the panel just the the right of the N number. The one to the left is from the standby vacuum system.

The other screenshot is of the first screen. It shows RPM and FF (again), Oil Pressure, Oil Temperature, and Fuel Pressure. At the lower left are the standard CHT/EGT bar graphs. It has all the standard display modes. One EGT and one CHT are shown at the bottom. Which are displayed depends on the mode set (scan, a particular cylinder, hottest, etc.).

There is a 3rd screen showing the calculated fuel level in each tank (along with RPM and FF, and the hottest EGT/CHT). And a 4th screen with total fuel and the calculated fuel parameters based on the GPS connection. Both also contain annunciation rectangles for all the primary gauges that illuminate in the event that the value for a given reading leaves the green range.

The third and last photo is of the empty right side of the panel. The tall thin vertical strip which now contains only 2 circuit breakers is where the engine gauges had been. The two empty circles had been occupied by a vacuum gauge and a single cylinder CHT/EGT/OAT. There had been no glovebox because the space behind that area of the panel was crisscrossed with tubes and wires that left when the instruments were removed.

Hope this helps.