Field overhaul on my IO-540's?

Well, the people I talked to when I looked into financing wanted 18% interest and 50% down! Which begs the question - why finance at all then? Yet, they had plenty of customers.

I don't know if you've bought a house, but at least when I did (this was back in Europe) they had to give you a paper telling you how much in total you'd be paying for that mortgage over it's effective life. In my case it was 25 years. I bough the house for, let's say, $250K. The repayment over the 25 years was $800K. That's when the reality of the financial instruments hit me. It's just a sucker deal, no matter how you slice it. Someone is going to pocket $550K of my money for doing nothing but taking a very slight risk. No cash flow you might save, or be able to put to work into savings accounts, will ever be able to earn you enough money to mitigate the fact that you're giving them $550K or $22K/year. That's an engine O/H every year.

Of course, most of the time we don't have a choice, especially when it comes to houses, but if mortgages/loans can at all be avoided, then they should. On planes they can almost alway be unless you're an airline.
 
stratobee said:
Well, the people I talked to when I looked into financing wanted 18% interest and 50% down! Which begs the question - why finance at all then? Yet, they had plenty of customers.

I don't know if you've bought a house, but at least when I did (this was back in Europe) they had to give you a paper telling you how much in total you'd be paying for that mortgage over it's effective life. In my case it was 25 years. I bough the house for, let's say, $250K. The repayment over the 25 years was $800K. That's when the reality of the financial instruments hit me. It's just a sucker deal, no matter how you slice it. Someone is going to pocket $550K of my money for doing nothing but taking a very slight risk. No cash flow you might save, or be able to put to work into savings accounts, will ever be able to earn you enough money to mitigate the fact that you're giving them $550K or $22K/year. That's an engine O/H every year.

Of course, most of the time we don't have a choice, especially when it comes to houses, but if mortgages/loans can at all be avoided, then they should. On planes they can almost alway be unless you're an airline.
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Now you understand why at the beginning of every religion and even the beginning of money itself, they put a prohibition on interest. As soon as you commoditize money, you create a plutocracy.
 
Henning said:
Now you understand why at the beginning of every religion and even the beginning of money itself, they put a prohibition on interest. As soon as you commoditize money, you create a plutocracy.
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Thats Deep.

I paid cash for my sons university degrees so they graduated zero debt. I could have let them borrow and put more into my equity for retirement instead.

Once they graduated, I told them to get a job and buy a car and save 20% down payment for a house and then pay that house off in 5 years by making double payments rather than minimum payments. If you want another bigger, nicer house then sell the paid off one and do it again on the 2nd home. Or keep the first home as rental property and buy another home based on that current income and down payment and pay it off in 5 years as well.

If you have a 20-30 year mortgage and make minimum payments then you are just another type of renter.

One son has his vehicles and a house 100% free and clear and the younger son is soon to follow but already working on his MBA.

They both understand the power of compounding and nature of finance.

Even if you pay 7% interest but make 11% on your investments you are losing in several ways. First you have to pay taxes on the 11% so it likely barely nets out to cover the interest you have to pay. Second if you do not need the home interest deduction you get a free $7k deduction from the government anyway for average home interest deduction built into the standard deduction. You get less tax audits as there is nothing to audit you are taking standard deductions.

Third you should only invest money you can afford to lose. I do not want to lose money that should have paid off my home. So I do not wish to invest money while owing bankers for cars, homes, airplanes, boats, college, children's college.

When the economy dropped I had very little stress as what I owned, I really owned so no wholesale selling of everything to stay afloat. Being self employed you see some booms and some busts and you realize there is a good reason to stay liquid at all times.

Once people in the medical industry felt their positions and incomes were guaranteed, before that oil and gas industry people were changing careers while oil failed to raise in price for 20 years. So fortunes can and do change.
 
Tony-

I don't think anyone would disagree that you've taken a conservative approach and that is never a bad idea.

If you were hypothetically faced (not the OP) with using up most of your cash for a $65K firewall forward, then this puts you in more of a quandary. If you do the $65K and something else in life comes up that requires cash you are in trouble. If you invest that cash in something safe with a reasonable return it is still accessible on short notice and the taxes for the investment are deferred. So you are using the governments money vs. just post tax dollars. Even then the investment in the worst case is taxed through capital gains at 23.8% (held over 1 year) vs. ordinary income of 40%. Then of course if we borrow using home equity then the interest is deductible, so with a 4.5% mortgage line you will have an effective interest rate of ~2.9% year one. Something that should be easy to beat with an investment.

Not that the above is absolutely the way to go, but in certain situations the argument has some merit.
 
This is a broader, but interesting off topic subject.

I think the approach to these things comes down to personality types. I grew up in an academic single parent home that was on the brink of poverty constantly. Still is. So I basically grew up with no money. This conditions people in one of two ways, I find: they either fear going back to no money (because they've experienced it), or they don't fear it because they remember that even though it sucked not to have money, it doesn't kill you and life can still be enjoyable. I'm in that later category, so I've never been very good at saving or keeping buffers. For me, the worst that can happen is that I end up where I started. Which wouldn't be the end of the world. One can always make new money. For others, that's a terrifying thought. No right or wrong here, just two different approaches. I understand the logic of always keeping a little buffer, but have never been able to do so myself. I go all in and then claw my way back financially. Others might have more piece of mind financing a plane or engines and keeping their funds as a safety zone.

I think there's merit and a case to be made for both ways depending on personality type.
 
Aircraft ownership has its ups and downs and is not always for the faint of heart. It sure as h*ll can be a time eater.

After a 7 month long wait is was time to fire her up with two newly overhauled engines. I loaded in my CFII with me (as I hadn't flown for almost 5 months) and off we went. Box climb above the airport up to 2000ft.

Engines oil pressure barely in the green at full power, and well below green on both engines at cruise. Right engine runs much hotter than left, but otherwise behaving. Cut it short after 20mins and land. Manage to do a good landing after being away for 5 months, which pleased me.

When they pull oil filters, the left engine showed excessive aluminium and steel that my mechanic was not happy with. Engine was sent back to overhauler for further inspection. Turns out there's something called an oil jet that directs oil to the bottom of the pistons for cooling on the S1A5. The one on cylinder 3 had come loose from the oil galley and created a gaping hole - that was the reason the engine could not make oil pressure. The metal in filter came from case damage as the oil jet nozzle exited. They decided to replace case and crank. Right engine was suspected to have the oil jet thingys mis-torqued as well, so it was also opened up for precautionary reasons.

At least they've been very speedy in rectifying it and it is part of warranty. I should be able to do new test flight end of this week if all goes to plan. I hope all goes well then. I'm done waiting.

Here's my mechanic sweating over the new info after we land.
 

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stratobee said:
Aircraft ownership has its ups and downs and is not always for the faint of heart. It sure as h*ll can be a time eater.

After an 7 month long wait is was time to fire her up with two newly overhauled engines. I loaded in my CFII with me (as I hadn't flown for almost 5 months) and off we went. Box climb above the airport up to 2000ft.

Engines oil pressure barely in the green at full power, and well below green on both engines at cruise. Right engine runs much hotter than left, but otherwise behaving. Cut it short after 20mins and land. Manage to do a good landing after being away for 5 months, which pleased me.

When they pull oil filters, the left engine showed excessive aluminium and steel that my mechanic was not happy with. Engine was sent back to overhauler for further inspection. Turns out there's something called an oil jet that directs oil to the bottom of the pistons for cooling on the S1A5. The one on cylinder 3 had come loose from the oil galley and created a gaping hole - that was the reason the engine could not make oil pressure. The metal in filter came from case damage as the oil jet nozzle exited. They decided to replace case and crank. Right engine was suspected to have the oil jet thingys mis-torqued as well, so it was also opened up for precautionary reasons.

At least they've been very speedy in rectifying it and it is part of warranty. I should be able to do new test flight end of this week if all goes to plan. I hope all goes well then. I'm done waiting.

Here's my mechanic sweating over the new info after we land.
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:hairraise:....:eek:...:yikes:....
 
So, if I recall you went with an inexpensive shop, clearly had a very slow overhaul time, and had problems on the first flight.
 
The slowness was partly due to my own finances. But yes, otherwise correct.
 
I was concerned about infant mortality. This has been far worse than I expected. Mike Busch was spot on with his chart of failures.

I think the shop did not do this 'by the book' and yes - there is a very detailed book on ohaul for this engine and suffix. That concerns me even more. The oil piston squirters are not something really new, nor unusual. Mistakes in this area are completely unacceptable. Maybe you should investigate a different shop, or have a second person in the shop when the next work starts to monitor?
 
Well, he chose a cheap shop (you get what you pay for) and the overhaul took a while (meaning the engine was sitting and if his finances were an issue they probably weren't thinking they wanted to impress this customer). What other choices with the overhaul were made? Not to insult our friend with the fast airplane whose speed I'm jealous of, I guess I'm wondering why anyone is surprised at the result, because I predicted it.
 
Ted, it was not the cheapest shop. I did get cheaper quotes, but went with these as they had a good balance between reputation and cost. I didn't have the finances to send to Penn Yann or any of the gold plated shops that charges $10K more per engine. I couldn't afford that.

These guys did everything they said they would do, on time. But obviously the engines did not perform in flight as expected, although they checked out in test bench and on ground runs. I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt for now, but if the engines continue to misbehave after having now been fixed a second time, then my patience will probably wear thinner.
 
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I'm not going to kick a man when he's down (at least not more than I have already), but if you re-read this from page 1, you had a number of people giving you advice that might be worth re-reading and considering going forward if you'd do anything differently. Read again after 500 hours on the engines, and again at 1,000.
 
stratobee said:
Ted, it was not the cheapest shop. I did get cheaper quotes, but went with these as they had a good balance between reputation and cost. I didn't have the finances to send to Penn Yann or any of the gold plated shops that charges $10K more per engine. I couldn't afford that.

These guys did everything they said they would do, on time. But obviously the engines did not perform in flight as expected, although they checked out in test bench and on ground runs. I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt for now, but if the engines continue to misbehave after having now been fixed a second time, then my patience will probably wear thinner.
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Ain't no way the oil pressure problem checked out ok on the ground runs..:no::no:.... IMHO
 
N801BH said:
Ain't no way the oil pressure problem checked out ok on the ground runs..:no::no:.... IMHO
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That!

I'd forward everything you have on the oil injectors and proceeding damage to whatever FSDO is responsible for the area that crap shop is located, it was that engine didn't "preform as expected"..... IT WASN'T ASSEMBLED CORRECTLY!


On a side note, I've had work done by very expensive shops that was subpar and vise versa, price tag ain't always a indicator of quality.
 
James331 said:
That!

I'd forward everything you have on the oil injectors and proceeding damage to whatever FSDO is responsible for the area that crap shop is located, it was that engine didn't "preform as expected"..... IT WASN'T ASSEMBLED CORRECTLY!


On a side note, I've had work done by very expensive shops that was subpar and vise versa, price tag ain't always a indicator of quality.
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:yeahthat:

IIRC Av Shilo's Comanche had a fresh Lycoming overhaul in it when it shredded itself. You can't expect a 100% rate out of any shop, just too many variables, and the bigger the shop, the more potential problems.

What will determine in the end the true value of the overhaul and quality of the shop is how they respond and what they do to stand behind their work.
 
Henning said:
You can't expect a 100% rate out of any shop, just too many variables,
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Correct, no shop will have 100% first time yield.

and the bigger the shop, the more potential problems.
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Do you have any statistics to back that up?
 
Dang! I'd be ready to :cryin::cryin: And then :mad::mad:

$65k spent and it sounds like the engines were doing better before the "overhaul."

stratobee said:
Aircraft ownership has its ups and downs and is not always for the faint of heart. It sure as h*ll can be a time eater.

Engines oil pressure barely in the green at full power, and well below green on both engines at cruise. Right engine runs much hotter than left, but otherwise behaving. Cut it short after 20mins and land. Manage to do a good landing after being away for 5 months, which pleased me.

When they pull oil filters, the left engine showed excessive aluminium and steel
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Ted DuPuis said:
Correct, no shop will have 100% first time yield.



Do you have any statistics to back that up?
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Basic math, the bigger the shop, the more people involved, more potential for having an idiot in the midst, and the tougher it is to supervise and perform quality control. If I have a 6-8 person crew I can be very picky about whom I hire, it's rather easy to keep everything going correctly, when it gets above 25, it's almost impossible. Then there is just the 'if you do more work, even if you have the same failure rate, you number of failures will be higher. Even factory new engines aren't always perfect.
 
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Again, please provide statistics to back that up and not "basic math" assumptions. Bigger shops also tend to have better QC programs and procedures.
 
Ted DuPuis said:
Again, please provide statistics to back that up and not "basic math" assumptions. Bigger shops also tend to have better QC programs and procedures.
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I don't think statistics exist to back your side either.
 
James331 said:
You got stats on that?


I go by word from trusted mouths.
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And given that I went with Zephyr, it should be obvious that I do as well. I'm very happy with my double engine overhaul and would use them again.
 
Henning said:
That the factory shop is going to produce better quality results on a rebuild than an individual A&P or small shop.
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That is not my position, and I put my money where my fingers are on that with who I chose for my overhauls. Believe me, I know more about Lycoming's sins than you.

My position is that you were making assumptions that you don't have evidence for, and that the OP made a bad decision for which the outcome was predictable.
 
stratobee said:
I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt for now, but if the engines continue to misbehave after having now been fixed a second time, then my patience will probably wear thinner.
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I hope they don't decide to "misbehave" on a high DA takeoff at MTOW.
 
stratobee said:
I'm not new to twin ownership, but I am new to my Aerostar. I got it cheap, knowing the engines were run out. In California where they levy a 9% user tax when you buy, it makes more sense to get in cheaper then upgrade then buy all dolled up. Engines are 300hrs over TBO. This doesn't scare me per se, and I fly it (as they don't make metal), but they do burn oil. Which would suggest the tops are bad, as they engines are clean and have no oil leaks. However, it doesn't make sense to do a top overhaul on a 2100hr engine.

I have gotten some quotes in, one from Heart Of Texas Engines for $21995. As I understood it, this included all accessories and the mags, but with overhauled cylinders and reusing as much as possible after NDT. Turbos obviously not included. This is a nice price, but I was wondering if there are some mom & pop A/P shops that have even less overhead and can offer a lower price? I want to avoid big shops if I can.

Does anyone have any recommendations in this regard where I could get a quote in? I'm based in So Cal, so ideally some leads on the west coast would be great. I would be willing to owner assist if this helps the price come down.
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Have you stopped to think you are going to burn $300,000 in fuel over the life of your two engines? Saving a couple thousand on a cheap engine overhaul is chump change.
 
Clip4 said:
Have you stopped to think you are going to burn $300,000 in fuel over the life of your two engines? Saving a couple thousand on a cheap engine overhaul is chump change.
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Besides.... A sick engine on a Aerostar will kill most pilots....:sad:......:redface:
 
Clip4 said:
Have you stopped to think you are going to burn $300,000 in fuel over the life of your two engines? Saving a couple thousand on a cheap engine overhaul is chump change.
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I'm all for saving money wherever you can, but it must be done intelligently. I see too many people think they're saving money on an overhaul, and end up spending way more money on future maintenance issues caused by a poor overhaul. That doesn't include the downtime that goes with it.
 
Sorry, I read the thread and realized you had already done the engines.


A friend in Long Beach used Tim's: http://timsaircraft.com

He seemed to be happy with his IO-320 overhaul.


stratobee said:
I'm not new to twin ownership, but I am new to my Aerostar. I got it cheap, knowing the engines were run out. In California where they levy a 9% user tax when you buy, it makes more sense to get in cheaper then upgrade then buy all dolled up. Engines are 300hrs over TBO. This doesn't scare me per se, and I fly it (as they don't make metal), but they do burn oil. Which would suggest the tops are bad, as they engines are clean and have no oil leaks. However, it doesn't make sense to do a top overhaul on a 2100hr engine.

I have gotten some quotes in, one from Heart Of Texas Engines for $21995. As I understood it, this included all accessories and the mags, but with overhauled cylinders and reusing as much as possible after NDT. Turbos obviously not included. This is a nice price, but I was wondering if there are some mom & pop A/P shops that have even less overhead and can offer a lower price? I want to avoid big shops if I can.

Does anyone have any recommendations in this regard where I could get a quote in? I'm based in So Cal, so ideally some leads on the west coast would be great. I would be willing to owner assist if this helps the price come down.
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Just brainstorming. Rebuild one engine. Now that sounds a little off the wall, but.....
 
Speaking of aerostars, there a very nice superstar for sale here in maryland. Flown by a 14000 hr. Pro. pilot, it's company owned and always hangared.
 
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N801BH said:
I am not sure.... In an Aerostar,, I would probably prefer to have BOTH motors fail...:rolleyes:
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It's a big fallacy about the Aerostar being a beast on a single engine, heck, the Aerostar will still get there faster on a single engine than your plane. :D
 
Good case history. Thanks. I'm new to aircraft ownership and maintenance. But, sensitive to methodology since I'm an engineer.

Really liked the observation about the Navajo owner who only uses factory remanufactured engines. Must have made a statistical judgement?

Looks like having to shave maintenance costs on an aircraft with otherwise high performance and operating expenses in order to keep flying it increases risk.
 
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