Despite their high strength and great deformability, monocrystaline copper-based shape memory alloys have been generally considered to have short cycle life times. Experimental results suggest that this is due to crack initiation at the metal surface. Wire samples of superelastic CuAlNi single crystal were prepared by centerless grinding to approximately one millimeter diameter, then subjected to repeated fatigue cycling of nominal five percent linear strain. Some of the samples were also electropolished in an acid-oxidizing solution before testing. Test results show that samples that were not true single crystal failed in a few cycles: these can be identified by the atomically smooth surface of separation. Wires that were ground but not electropolished survived several hundred cycles while electropolished samples failed after between one and five thousand cycles. Multiple cracks appeared on all samples after hundreds of cycles, suggesting that surface crack initiation and propagation may be the dominant failure mode. The experimental techniques, scanning electron microscopy images, and correlation plots are presented.