Mike Busch's "Manifesto" Book

Kristin said:
I seriously disagree with him about magnetos. A failing mag can cross fire and effectively kill most all thrust until you shut off the defective mag, something you may or may not have had time to do if you are close to the ground when it happens. I won't fly them until they fail.[\quote]

IRAN vs overhaul.

I don't think he opposes routine inspecting after 500 hours, and then repairing anything that shows serious wear. Because magnetos do take a beating, and as you say you don't really want one to fail. It's the routine overhaul he doesn't like.

I think I got that right, from reading his articles. Haven't read the book.
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Mike is a good salesman. The question is... As in most things in aviation...

Are you buying what he's selling.
 
Geico266 said:
That is exactly what Mike B is talking about. :yes:
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We're talking about an inspection right? Other than removing access panels what part is invasive? I'm not being argumentative I'm really trying to understand what these risks are.
 
Kristin said:
Mike writes the book as an owner who happens to have gotten an A&P over the years.
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This is an important distinction. As an owner/pilot, he understands many of the flying aspects better than most A&Ps. I've found many A&Ps have minimal (if any) flight experience, and don't understand flying well at all. It's funny to see how poor some are at starting engines.

But, as far as I can tell, he mostly derived his philosophies from observation of a limited number of experiences, especially surrounding his T310R that he was able to watch and maintain closely. I remember him showing the math for why turbos didn't cost you extra money. Looks good on paper, does not translate to reality at all.

We have a lot of people on this forum with good technical knowledge in some degree. People who've built their own planes, engineers, A&Ps, auto mechanics, all people who have some idea which end of a wrench is the box end and lefty loosey/righty tighty. Those people I think have a lot to be gained by involvement in maintenance and a careful understanding.

The doctor who thinks that 200 hours sounds like a good idea for an oil change interval and thinks the 25-50 hour range is just a waste of money...
 
Alexb2000 said:
We're talking about an inspection right? Other than removing access panels what part is invasive? I'm not being argumentative I'm really trying to understand what these risks are.
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Minor example:

The pins my rotors float on are steel. They thread into aluminum wheels, secured by blue Loctite. Each annual I dutifully pull the wheels, disassemble them, inspect and clean them, flip the tires on the wheel, examine the wheels for cracks, clean and repack the bearings, insert new cotter keys, rebalance and reinstall. To do right, maybe a couple hours a side altogether.

All this for a plane that may have only flown, on average, less than 60 hours. Maybe 120 landings or so.

And I'll continue to do so. But all that assembly/disassembly has its own cost in wear on the parts involved and risk of error in assembly.

As an Experimental, I don't think I'm legally bound to do each and every item on the checklist - only to affirm that I have inspected the plane and found it in condition for safe flight. But following the "Most Conservative Action" mantra, I do in fact follow the checklist to the letter.
 
FastEddieB said:
Minor example:

The pins my rotors float on are steel. They thread into aluminum wheels, secured by blue Loctite. Each annual I dutifully pull the wheels, disassemble them, inspect and clean them, flip the tires on the wheel, examine the wheels for cracks, clean and repack the bearings, insert new cotter keys, rebalance and reinstall. To do right, maybe a couple hours a side altogether.

All this for a plane that may have only flown, on average, less than 60 hours. Maybe 120 landings or so.

And I'll continue to do so. But all that assembly/disassembly has its own cost in wear on the parts involved and risk of error in assembly.

As an Experimental, I don't think I'm legally bound to do each and every item on the checklist - only to affirm that I have inspected the plane and found it in condition for safe flight. But following the "Most Conservative Action" mantra, I do in fact follow the checklist to the letter.
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OK, I can see that. On my bird flying roughly 150 hours a year my A&P only does the wheel bearings every other year. I have had to replace some hardware from service wear, but it hasn't been a big deal. So I guess it depends on who is doing your service.
 
weirdjim said:
I didn't ask you for a personal opinion. I asked for an analysis of how a mag failure can contribute to zero thrust.

I've been there before, and can guarantee you that teeth failing will NOT bring about the scenario that you descibe.

There are no such things as plastic distributors. There are plastic gears.

I was the victim of a double mag failure and can describe it a hell of a lot better than this.

Try again.,

Jim
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I see you broke into Greg's house and stole his bottle of penis enlargement pills again.
 
Bill Watson said:
There are some very lively and enlightening discussions going on around things like battery maintenance, fuses versus circuit breakers, backup strategies and system failures. But most of that stuff can only be applied on the experimental side. Oh well
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That caught my eye....what's the debate between fuses vs. circuit breakers??
 
Kristin said:
Mike writes the book as an owner who happens to have gotten an A&P over the years. He does not write it as a professional mechanic who is now an aircraft owner.
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Exactly! I have pointed this out to people before. To my knowledge he has never been employed as an A&P, IA or even just a mechanic. Many of the columns people have read over the years, he wrote before he ever earned his A&P ticket. He is a journalist first, aircraft owner second and A&P third.

This does not mean he doesn't have useful insights, or good tips. As a journalist, he can actually do what most A&Ps never do, research and statistics. That is useful.

As an owner and PIC, one thing to consider is when your airplane is repaired, an IA signs his name to it and puts his skin in the game as it were should something go wrong. When something goes wrong and you operate on Mike Busch's advise, he has no skin in the game and he will not be beside you.

So IMO, it's good to take Mike's opinions and insights into consideration, but to blindly follow his "manifesto" and make all your maintenance decisions according to that is foolish.
 
FastEddieB said:
I think I got that figured out. Seems to require a physical Kindle, which I don't have. Again, I think.

Anyway, I don't mind sending some money Mike's way.

Saw one presentation by him at a Cirrus Migration, and he seemed well-informed. Also have read many articles by him in the EAA magazine.

I do my own Annual Condition Inspections on my Sky Arrow, by the checklist. Still, some of the items seem awfully invasive given the limited hours I fly each year.
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If you have a physical kindle, which I know you don't, it can be borrowed for free from the lending library. I did that just last night after reading this thread. Now...if you have the kindle app on your phone or ipad then you can join the kindle unlimited thing and get it that way. It is also free for a I believe 30days if you wanted to try it out..
 
Kristin said:
I think that Mike offers a good service for some owners. However, if I was doing an annual for one of his customers, I would certainly be billing the client for the time I had to spend on the phone talking to Mike about what I see and what he thinks about what I see.
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If one were selling a plane, would Mike's involvement on behalf of the buyer represent an issue?
 
LDJones said:
That caught my eye....what's the debate between fuses vs. circuit breakers??
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It's primarily an experimental builder debate with electrical guru 'lectric Bob moderating.

It starts with understanding that fuses and CBs only function in todays avionics world is to protect wires from burning up due to a short. Fuse and CB sizing should be spec'd according to this requirement... but of course manufacturers specs should be followed as well.

For builders there's a major cost differential between a panel of CBs and a fuse panel. CBs can easily be reset, fuses a bit less so. Then the question is if a properly sized CB trips, should it be reset? Probably not based on it's function since none of us want a smoker but that's not most of us were weaned on.

Personally I went the fuse route except for 4 CBs - 2 for the voltage regulators per the manufacturer, 1 for the AP which also acts as an emergency disconnect, and 1 for the flaps which is probably not needed. Otherwise I have 2 fuse panels for my 2 buses with roughly a dozen fuses each. The fuses are accessible in flight if needed but not on the panel , and they are the automotive blade type with LED trip indicatore to make trips easy to detect.

Of course I've had 0 trips in 3 years and am perfectly satisfied with the setup while more than a few dollars and some extra effort has been saved.

'electric Bob Nuckolls is an engineer and longtime aircraft industry player that like Busch, is controversial in some circles but provides the homebuilder community with a forum for hashing out these issues.
 
Dav8or said:
...So IMO, it's good to take Mike's opinions and insights into consideration, but to blindly follow his "manifesto" and make all your maintenance decisions according to that is foolish.
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As I've said, if you read the book or most any of the Savvy stuff there really isn't much "manifesto" in it. On the chapter on TBO's Mike describes the conditions when he would overhaul an engine and they include items such as the oil filter clogged with metal particles or a crack in the crankcase as long as your forearm. I mean these are not revelations and you probably didn't need to buy a book to figure them out.

Much of the rest is just filler material. He likes retreads and Autolite plugs and is aghast at any mechanic who disagrees with him on that.

Still, there are folks who read his material and feel as though they've had an epiphany. So there is a market for what he's selling.
 
Silvaire said:
As I've said, if you read the book or most any of the Savvy stuff there really isn't much "manifesto" in it. On the chapter on TBO's Mike describes the conditions when he would overhaul an engine and they include items such as the oil filter clogged with metal particles or a crack in the crankcase as long as your forearm. I mean these are not revelations and you probably didn't need to buy a book to figure them out.

Much of the rest is just filler material. He likes retreads and Autolite plugs and is aghast at any mechanic who disagrees with him on that.

Still, there are folks who read his material and feel as though they've had an epiphany. So there is a market for what he's selling.
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I wonder how many of these recommendations are biased by what he personally flies? Many people might push their engines a little longer and harder if they know they have a spare like he does on his 310. Take a single on a winter night over lake Michigan and saving a few bucks on maintenance isn't a priority.
 
Well actually he does constrain his run it till it drops philosophy to components that have redundancy meaning if you have two vacuum pumps (or a backup system) or two alternators etc, etc...

For most SEL folks that is not the case.
 
FWIW... I used Savvy for the prebuy and for the ongoing mx on my 310. I'm convinced that it is saving me money, but am completely comfortable saying that it isn't for every owner.

I'm happy to pay $1k per year to have an non-interested party advising me on mx practices. To some of the other comments in this thread - I just came up on 100 hrs and the Savvy recommendation was to do a service on the plugs and to do the 500 hr inspection/OH on the mags. Not sure where some of the vitriol is coming from in this thread, but it the real world story of savvy is a blend of mike's manifesto and highly experienced A&P's.

YMMW, but I'm very happy with my experience so far.

Eggman
 
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James_Dean said:
FWIW... I used Savvy for the prebuy and for the ongoing mx on my 310. I'm convinced that it is saving me money, but am completely comfortable saying that it isn't for every owner.

I'm happy to pay $1k per year to have an non-interested party advising me on mx practices. Too some of the other comments in this thread - I just came up on 100 hrs and the Savvy recommendation was to do a service on the plugs and to do the 500 hr inspection/OH on the mags. Not sure where some of the vitriol is coming from in this thread, but it the real world story of savvy is a blend of mike's manifesto and highly experienced A&P's.

YMMW, but I'm very happy with my experience so far.
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I'm glad to hear of the positive experience.

I was impressed with the way he sells his engine analysis services here with "The world's most powerful web-based platform for piston aircraft engine analysis". It offers a free, high quality and comprehensive platform for working with your own engine data while offering his analysis services as an alternative to DIY. I've been using it for some time as a number of other experimental folks have who have taken the DIY approach. No downside, all upside, free is nice.
 
timwinters said:
I see you broke into Greg's house and stole his bottle of penis enlargement pills again.
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In the first place, Winters, I don't need your smartass remarks.

In the second place, the book on me from the time I was a wee lad is that I don't suffer fools graciously ... as my second grade teacher found out and it hasn't changed one little bit in the last 65 years.

In the third place, I asked a question because I didn't know the answer. I really wanted to know how a plastic distributor (I'm presuming that was a distributor GEAR) could crossfire an entire engine. I could not make a valid scenario as to how that could happen ... even if it broke a dozen gear teeth how it could continue bollixing up the engine...and if that were true, why simply shutting that mag off didn't solve the problem.

I wanted an answer that made logical sense so that I could file it with my store of knowledge.

What I got back was a bit of fluff that said that I had to be there. That is a fool's answer and as I said, I am not a bit gracious to that answer.

I had a single mag failure that caused complete loss of power and after three months of investigation, I figured out why. I'm more than willing to share that technical information and I would hope somebody would step on my dobber if I shined them on by saying that they had to be there.

SUfficient for you, technotard?

Thanks,

Jim
 
Silvaire said:
Well actually he does constrain his run it till it drops philosophy to components that have redundancy meaning if you have two vacuum pumps (or a backup system) or two alternators etc, etc...

For most SEL folks that is not the case.
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What would be really !!REALLY!! nice is to have a MTBF table on all the parts of the airplane. THat is, the average time for the carburetor to urp up, the average time for the mags to stop magging, and so on.

Then we could make a conscious gambling decision ... I'm beating the odds, at what point do I say that I'm not going to gamble any more, but rebuild the sucker (NOT REPLACE, YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT PARTS WERE ACTUALLY REPLACED) to new specs.

Maintenance heaven ...

Jim
 
weirdjim said:
What would be really !!REALLY!! nice is to have a MTBF table on all the parts of the airplane. THat is, the average time for the carburetor to urp up, the average time for the mags to stop magging, and so on.

Then we could make a conscious gambling decision ... I'm beating the odds, at what point do I say that I'm not going to gamble any more, but rebuild the sucker (NOT REPLACE, YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT PARTS WERE ACTUALLY REPLACED) to new specs.

Maintenance heaven ...
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I'm not an engineer but MTBF seems on the surface not to be that useful for many components. It sort of presumes a steady state of wear that at some point result in failure when in fact, installation variation could cause early failures and variations in batches of component parts could cause a rash of failures that any average or MTBF would misrepresent.

Doing everything we can to make it so component failures don't result in some catastrophic outcome would seem to be the key. Dual mags being one approach, 'endurance' electrical buses being another. The system that worries me the most is the fuel system. A broken injector line between the spider and any one cylinder would fail the engine.
 
The point of MTBF is just that - mean time between failure. So it basically means if you make it there before failure, you're average. Depending on process quality in manufacturing and other factors, it may have a very large standard deviation.

In piston aviation, it's less useful for many components because there is such a wide operator variation, but it still has uses.
 
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Silvaire said:
Most of what he writes however is based on a fantasy world where A&P mechanics force you to do things you don't need to do. I've been involved in aviation maintenance in both the GA and commercial realms for about twice as long as Mike and honestly I don't know ANYBODY in the General Aviation world who overhauls their engine just because it has reached TBO, nor do I know anyone who replaces alternators or other components based on time.
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If you really have been involved in aviation maintenance that long then I find it very suprising you haven't run into those kind of people, because they ARE out there. Perhaps not as prevalent as Mike Busch tries to make them out to be, but they are most definitely there and owners who are not very knowledgeable or involved in the details of maintenance can easily be taken advantage of by such shops.

I had a shop 'strongly' advise me to overhaul both my vacuum pumps on the Baron because they had reached the recommended O/H time. I did not and my current IA agrees.
 
weirdjim said:
I didn't ask you for a personal opinion. I asked for an analysis of how a mag failure can contribute to zero thrust.

I've been there before, and can guarantee you that teeth failing will NOT bring about the scenario that you descibe.

There are no such things as plastic distributors. There are plastic gears.

I was the victim of a double mag failure and can describe it a hell of a lot better than this.

Try again.,

Jim
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I've been there before and can say that when the bearings in a mag seize and the result is the shearing off and grinding down of a gear tooth and subsequent transit of metal shavings through the oil distribution.....it does indeed result in a loss of thrust.
 
Fearless Tower said:
If you really have been involved in aviation maintenance that long then I find it very suprising you haven't run into those kind of people, because they ARE out there. Perhaps not as prevalent as Mike Busch tries to make them out to be, but they are most definitely there and owners who are not very knowledgeable or involved in the details of maintenance can easily be taken advantage of by such shops.

I had a shop 'strongly' advise me to overhaul both my vacuum pumps on the Baron because they had reached the recommended O/H time. I did not and my current IA agrees.
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The equation is different on a twin.

When I was flying a lot of hard IFR & needed a very high dispatch rate in my single (business travel), I'd replace the vacuum pump periodically & keep the old one in the plane as a spare. Likewise, I'd replace the alternator belt every couple of years at annual because it's a major PITA to pull the prop if the belt breaks & the belt is a cheap item.
 
wsuffa said:
The equation is different on a twin.

When I was flying a lot of hard IFR & needed a very high dispatch rate in my single (business travel), I'd replace the vacuum pump periodically & keep the old one in the plane as a spare. Likewise, I'd replace the alternator belt every couple of years at annual because it's a major PITA to pull the prop if the belt breaks & the belt is a cheap item.
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Totally agree, just commenting that even with a twin, that particular shop was recommending the simultaneous overhaul of both pumps based on time.
 
Bill Watson said:
How about the whole I idea of replacing/overhauling alternators, mags, and vacuum pumps upon failure rather than at recommended intervals.
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Vac pumps you might want to change out at regular intervals. Dry pumps wear as they are used. The ones i've seen fail, just fail. No warning.

Not sure if one dead pump is a no-go item on a twin or not.

Alternators, no way. On a car, an alternator could fail at 20,000 miles or 300,000 miles. No sense in pre-emptive alternator maintenance.
 
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James_Dean said:
...Not sure where some of the vitriol is coming from in this thread...
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We should probably set the record straight here, disagreement or even the questioning of savvy's positions shouldn't be seen as "vitriol"

Mike Busch is, first and foremost, a journalist. Virtually everything technical in his works is taken directly from manufacturers service bulletins (including all of the graphics) He writes a good story but even his opinions are not unique or proprietary. If I have any beef with him it's his mantra that most A&P mechanics don't know their a$$ from a hole in the ground or are bent on ripping you off. Honestly, he really does come across that way to many of us.

Other than that I'm sure he's a great guy and I'd be happy to have a beer with him.
 
Silvaire said:
We should probably set the record straight here, disagreement or even the questioning of savvy's positions shouldn't be seen as "vitriol"
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No kidding! Reminds me of when anyone dares to critique the APS folks, or their religious disciples and their writings in a forum. :eek:
 
Dav8or said:
No kidding! Reminds me of when anyone dares to critique the APS folks, or their religious disciples and their writings in a forum. :eek:
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Blasphemer.jpg
 
I think that is only if you have Kindle unlimited, it is $9.99 for prime users.
 
Fearless Tower said:
I've been there before and can say that when the bearings in a mag seize and the result is the shearing off and grinding down of a gear tooth and subsequent transit of metal shavings through the oil distribution.....it does indeed result in a loss of thrust.
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:lol:

:eek:
 
Just go to the savvy website where all of his articles are posted. There's nothing new in his little red book.
 
Necropost warning.

At the front of the book, there is reference to follow-on "volumes to this set".
Does anyone know if that ever happened? A point-out to where they are available?
 
I have read it, listened to all of his videos, and have to disagree with the statement above that he "states the obvious". That's just not true. For example, he maintains that compression is not a good measurement tool to determine the state of engine wear and tear. Many will tell you that's the main measurement. But read the book to find out why.

Another myth: You should land on full rich or near it. His take: This can cause engine shock cooling and is not good for the engine. He recommends leaving the engine lean all the way down and raising the mixture on go around if needed by getting in the habit of spreading out your hand on the throttle.

So agree or disagree, but he's definitely not stating the obvious.

I happen to agree with him, so his company manages my maintenance (http://www.savvyaviator.com/). They also handled my pre-buy, which saved me thousands more than the fee I paid them.
 
VWGhiaBob said:
Another myth: You should land on full rich or near it. His take: This can cause engine shock cooling and is not good for the engine. He recommends leaving the engine lean all the way down and raising the mixture on go around if needed by getting in the habit of spreading out your hand on the throttle.
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And the myth about the myth is that shock cooling is a myth... :rofl:
 
VWGhiaBob said:
Another myth: You should land on full rich or near it. His take: This can cause engine shock cooling and is not good for the engine. He recommends leaving the engine lean all the way down and raising the mixture on go around if needed by getting in the habit of spreading out your hand on the throttle.
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Going full rich is going to shock cool the cylinders. Suuuurrre. :rofl: Much better to test the mixture control in the middle of a go around. :rolleyes:

I didn't realize his book was a parody.
 
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