Mechanic rant

weirdjim said:
OK, now play devil's advocate. How many of these items are UNAIRWORTHY
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You and I both know very few of them are. That's why they have been deferred. Corrosion gets subjective too. Many many times corrosion turns into:

Bend, perform ultrasonic thickness inspection for repair disposition, received FAA approved repair which says to eddy current area for cracks then acid etc, alodine and topcoat. No reinforcement or replacement necessary.

Sometimes corrosion removal leads to finding a very large corrosion blob hidden and replacement or reinforcement is the repair.

I remember seeing a Lear aileron during an IA renewal seminar that was a great example of what can happen. This aileron had a pinhole in the paint that a technician noticed on an unrelated inspection. The tech thought it looked like it went all the way through the skin. The aileron came off and was x-rayed which showed that it had collected much moisture and was full of corrosion to the point where large sections of honeycomb core where missing also impacting control surface balance.
 
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weirdjim said:
OK, now play devil's advocate. How many of these items are UNAIRWORTHY...
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It's a list compiled by a guy who is about to lay a seventeen thousand dollar inspection bill in your lap and probably feels that he needs all the supporting evidence he can muster up. Therefore every little nitpicking rub with every adjective he can think of shoe horned in there to make it sound more perilous than it might actually be.

As I said earlier, beware of squawk lists that display emotion from the inspecting mechanic. These all appear to be run of the mill observations, there's no "Holy Mother of God!" item on that list that I can see. :rolleyes:
 
Silvaire said:
It's a list compiled by a guy who is about to lay a seventeen thousand dollar inspection bill in your lap and probably feels that he needs all the supporting evidence he can muster up. Therefore every little nitpicking rub with every adjective he can think of shoe horned in there to make it sound more perilous than it might actually be.

As I said earlier, beware of squawk lists that display emotion from the inspecting mechanic. These all appear to be run of the mill observations, there's no "Holy Mother of God!" item on that list that I can see. :rolleyes:
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Many times the buyer has new expectations of a used aircraft.
 
ahkahn said:
Yeah, they had to rebuild one of the cylinders and the other one was OK. PITA was saying it nicely. His crew would have done it if this wasn't such a rush job over the weekend! I like your idea about replacing the lines... maybe next time I'll have that done.

I'll keep everyone updated on how the new bird goes! Closing and checkout is tomorrow!
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This is the right attitude for aircraft maintenance. Try to do something, no matter how small, at each annual to improve the airplane and it will go a long way to preventing a $17k bill from creeping back up down the road.
 
A touch off topic, but what kind of cruise speed are you expecting with that full mods straight tail Lance? I have been shopping for a new (to me) plane for a few months, and the straight tail Lance was one of my considerations.

Thanks for sharing the story. It's too easy to buy a plane, assume that since the seller has spent a bunch of $$$ over the last X years, that the maintenance has been solid.
 
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