400A autopilot

[aldoradave]

Having been a big s tec fan in the past, and now acquiring a 73 P337 with a 400A a/p. I'd like to hear some comments about the 400a before jumping to the conclusion that I need to replace it. Any comments are welcome.

Dave Dillehay

[Ernie Martin]

My experience has been (and I think that if you do a Search you will find that others agree) that the 400A is a fine autopilot. It is, however, subject to aging, in the sense that with time (35 years for a 1973 model) the electronic components drift/atrophy and service is required. The most common fault is leaking capacitors, which is an easy repair. You can still find shops that fix them, and the equipment can be removed (1/2 is under the throttle/props/mixture levers, the other half is overhead and towards the rear, behind the headliner) and sent out to be serviced.

On this subject, perhaps the most knowledgeable person on this Board is Pete Somers and I hope he'll jump in here with his views. BTW, my Search on autopilot and 400A yielded many threads with good info.

Ernie

[Pete Somers]

Dave
As Ernie has said the 400A is a good A/P and like all things subject to aging, however there is plenty of shops to repair them and still a lot of spares available. It works fine and easy to use.
Stick with it, you will find it an excellent system.

Pete

[rhurt]

Has anyone hooked one up to a Garmin 430/530W with a gpss convertor? Does the gpss make it track better on a cross country course and will it fly procedure turns and gps approaches?

[CO_Skymaster]

I'm curious about the same if I hook an Aspen Pro into the autopilot.

[Pete Somers]

If you hook this system up to the A/P and you have a Course/Heading input and a left/right and operate it in NAV mode should be no problem.

Pete