Life expectancy of B & G autopilots

Have experienced an internal compass error on my 10+ year old B & G a.p. Just wondering whether it's worth repairing/rebuilding or is it time for a replacement? My experience with a B & G on my previous IP38 and with my current IP45 has been very good. Have anecdotally heard complaints about most other brands, but have been very pleased with my experience with B & G's products. Anyone with thoughts or suggestions on this? Thanks.

My B&G Auto Pilot is also 12+ years old. When I first purchased the boat, the surveyor felt the AP was DOA. When I got the boat to my marina, an excellent boat mechanic checked it for me. He told me it just needed to be rebooted and configured! All I know is it's still working very well and it cost about two hours labor to repair it. It normally varies several degrees from GPS.

Bill

s/v IP40 Charbonneau

We've had our 1993 IP 38 for 3 years now and the B&G equipment has had its problems. As we've struggled with the problems I have learned a lot. Our original unit, long discontinued, had the compass integrated into the computer. My engineer son was able to find the problem with that unit - corrosion across the power transistors. Now, every time it fails we take the board out and clean around the transistors. Then it works great for another couple of months.

Wanting to have something more stable, I recently purchased a used ACP computer and fluxgate compass. The old unit was 17 years out of production - the new unit has only been discontinued for 12 years. Almost new!

According to Myles of Myles Electronics, the new-to-me computer is perfectly functional. I'm looking forward to installing it next month when we return to the boat.

I'd like to stay with the B&G equipment as long as I can because when it works, it works well. I only about the ability to find replacement parts.

Interesting discussion. I recently bought Matchmaker, a 2001 IP 380 in Oxford, Md and brought her down to St. Pete. Somewhere around Charleston, the B&G Network Pilot began acting strange and giving "internal compass errors". Upon my arrival at the "megadock" in Ctown, I ran was able to find a local B&G repair tech who went through the system, found a loose connection, and seemed to fix the issue.

Several days later the system failed again and I ended up hand steering from Titusville to St. Pete. Back at home I reset the system, upgraded the Raytheon C-80 software, swung the compass per instructions and it seems to be working fine, but have not taken any extended trips since the Oxford-St. Pete run.

How do you folks "reset the system?"