Unauthorized repairs

Bottom line is that there are a million things that you can usually get away with. And, we all know that log books are often a work of historical fiction.

Inspections that didn't happen get logged.

Repairs are made, perhaps due to a prop strike, ground loop, gear up, etc., without logging the damage or the repair. NDH anyone?

Or, even when it appears that work was done and logged properly, unscrupulous individuals can take short cuts. Examples range from not using a torque wrench for torque sensitive fastener to shrinking fabric with a heat gun even though the STC states that this will void the STC...

9 times out of 10 you get away with it. But when the case starts to fret and leak oil, or the fabric fails due to overheating, well, there is always an excuse...

All you can do is make your best effort to be sure that the repair is properly done and properly logged when you are doing the work and/or watch over the "professional" doing the work since it will be your ass in the sling.
 
Some other food for thought:

We often hear of someone buying an airplane and then getting hit with a huge annual inspection bill. Very often part of this bill is to go back and "fix" a lot of the previous owners "self maintenance" issues.

Owners are notoriously cheap choosing to spend their money on the latest gee whiz avionics or pilot accessories ($1200 headsets, etc) but when it comes to maintenance trying to either ignore the problem or hoping it will magically heal itself. Over the years it's been comical to see what some owners have done with their airplanes to "fix" them rather than do it correctly.
 
Ted DuPuis said:
"You gonna prove I changed that switch? I ain't touched it, been that way since I bought the piece of **** airplane."
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Wow, that's a new excuse. I bet the investigators never heard that one before.:rofl:
 
For the original poster.
You stated you got the new switch from your A&P and you replaced it yourself. Thank him for getting you out of a jam ask him if he would look over your install and sign it off. Offer to buy him a drink after work.

What is your A&P going to do next annual? He knows he sold you a new switch and he did not install it. There is no log book entry for it.
 
Ron Levy said:
That would be an issue in an enforcement action, but not in an annual or pre-purchase inspection -- there the only question is whether or not the documentation matches up with the airplane.

That's what the mechanic later has to certify in the records for the airplane to be legal again.

If you're doing an annual on it, I should hope you do.

I'm not even an IA, and I've discovered undocumented maintenance/repairs.
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You missed the point again.
There would be no documentation.
How would any A&P tell the part was changed?

When it appears normal, acts normal, Why would any one suspect it was not airworthy? Unless there is some deviation to clue you, you'd never see it either.

When you see one new wire in a mag harness, yep pretty good clue it was changed. When you know the engine was equipped with Bendix mags last time you saw it, and it now has Slicks, yep pretty good clue. But there are a multitude of things that the inspector would never suspect.
 
RotorAndWing said:
Some other food for thought:

We often hear of someone buying an airplane and then getting hit with a huge annual inspection bill. Very often part of this bill is to go back and "fix" a lot of the previous owners "self maintenance" issues.

Owners are notoriously cheap choosing to spend their money on the latest gee whiz avionics or pilot accessories ($1200 headsets, etc) but when it comes to maintenance trying to either ignore the problem or hoping it will magically heal itself. Over the years it's been comical to see what some owners have done with their airplanes to "fix" them rather than do it correctly.
Click to expand...

Isn't the whole point of a pre-purchase inspection to find that stuff prior to buying the aircraft ? WTH
 
Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe said:
Bottom line is that there are a million things that you can usually get away with. And, we all know that log books are often a work of historical fiction.

Inspections that didn't happen get logged.

Repairs are made, perhaps due to a prop strike, ground loop, gear up, etc., without logging the damage or the repair. NDH anyone?

Or, even when it appears that work was done and logged properly, unscrupulous individuals can take short cuts. Examples range from not using a torque wrench for torque sensitive fastener to shrinking fabric with a heat gun even though the STC states that this will void the STC...

9 times out of 10 you get away with it. But when the case starts to fret and leak oil, or the fabric fails due to overheating, well, there is always an excuse...

All you can do is make your best effort to be sure that the repair is properly done and properly logged when you are doing the work and/or watch over the "professional" doing the work since it will be your ass in the sling.
Click to expand...

IF you were contemplating this aircraft as a restoration project what would you really be concerned with?

http://www.barnstormers.com/classified_953763_1954+Cessna+180+project.html
 
Tom-D said:
You missed the point again.
There would be no documentation.
How would any A&P tell the part was changed?
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Every A&P to whom I've taken my plane can tell when someone's replaced an old part with a new one, just by looking. Heck, I can do that myself when I see someone else's plane, and I'm not an A&P, no less an IA like yourself. And that doesn't even begin to address the issue of repairs, which should be obvious to the greenest ink-wet A&P.

When you see one new wire in a mag harness, yep pretty good clue it was changed. When you know the engine was equipped with Bendix mags last time you saw it, and it now has Slicks, yep pretty good clue. But there are a multitude of things that the inspector would never suspect.
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Not saying it's impossible to hide the work, but as you say yourself, it's often pretty easy to spot.
 
Tom-D said:
Isn't the whole point of a pre-purchase inspection to find that stuff prior to buying the aircraft ? WTH
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That is the idea, but sometimes buyers don't do proper due diligence (say, by letting the seller's mechanic do the work, or skimping on the time/money for their own mechanic to do it), and then they get burned bad at the next annual. Seems to me you've posted a few such tales of woe yourself about planes people have brought to you for maintenance/inspection.
 
Tom-D said:
You missed the point again.
There would be no documentation.
How would any A&P tell the part was changed?
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I think you are the one who is missing the point. Should that part contribute to an accident, and you were the last to sign off the plane as airworthy, the feds will not be looking at the person who installed it, they'll be looking at you.

Accident investigators ain't stupid.
 
Ron Levy said:
That is the idea, but sometimes buyers don't do proper due diligence (say, by letting the seller's mechanic do the work, or skimping on the time/money for their own mechanic to do it), and then they get burned bad at the next annual. Seems to me you've posted a few such tales of woe yourself about planes people have brought to you for maintenance/inspection.
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Why would someone do this? Why is it uncommon to budget for this in the purchase?

Few years ago, when I was in my 20s and not making much $$, my friends criticized me for buying a high-mileage Nissan (IIRC it has 92,000 miles on it) that was 7 years old. What they didn't know was the bank lent me $6,500 for the car and I paid $3,300 tax, tags and title for it then turned around and got an even more thorough inspection than I could before buying. Anything under $2,000 to fix was money ahead in my book.

All it got was an oil change, a detail by me and a solder job to the door lock timer, also by me. I paid that loan off in no-time and drove the car for 4 years, ~30,000 miles until it was stolen:mad2:. About a year before the theft, I put a new transmission in it for $1,700 and was about to get it repainted.

I fail to see why airplane owners want to try to save a dollar here-there on an airplane; toaster oven, sure but not an airplane.
 
Jaybird180 said:
Why would someone do this? Why is it uncommon to budget for this in the purchase?
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See R&W's post above about the misplaced financial priorities of some aircraft owners. But the fact that you find this behavior puzzling speaks well for your safety priorities.
 
JOhnH said:
Wow, that's a new excuse. I bet the investigators never heard that one before.:rofl:
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And your point?

Ron Levy said:
This isn't so much an enforcement issue as a documentation issue, and airplanes with documentation issues are harder to sell. The fact that it's not the factory-original part isn't hard to demonstrate, and the buyer doesn't care who did the work, just that it's undocumented. Sure, if the work was done right and it's a legal part, you can usually get an A&P/IA to do an entry confirming the work was done legally at some unknown date in the past, and that solves the documentation problem for the future, but somebody's going to have to pay that mechanic to do that, and it won't be the buyer (unless you take it off the selling price).
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How many prebuys would notice an MS35058-22 missing and having an NKK S301T from Digikey, then looking in the logs to find the entry for it?
 
Ted DuPuis said:
How many prebuys would notice an MS35058-22 missing and having an NKK S301T from Digikey, then looking in the logs to find the entry for it?
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If it's brand new and shiny and all the other switches are old and grimy? Pretty easy to spot. But as I said, there's plenty that can be hidden from most inspections if you pick the right task and do the work neatly. But at the end of the day, it's back to that old "i-word" again, and as I was told in the Air Force, integrity is like virginity -- either you have it or you don't, and once it's gone, it's gone.
 
That's why you smearing some old sludge on it first. Seriously though I consult with my a&p/AI before doing anything like that and have him look it over for The paperwork portion of it all.
 
tmyers said:
That's why you smearing some old sludge on it first. Seriously though I consult with my a&p/AI before doing anything like that and have him look it over for The paperwork portion of it all.
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Yep, it really isn't that difficult to get a signature and have it all squared away.
 
Norman said:
I think you are the one who is missing the point. Should that part contribute to an accident, and you were the last to sign off the plane as airworthy, the feds will not be looking at the person who installed it, they'll be looking at you.

Accident investigators ain't stupid.
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They will have one hard time proving when it was done and who did it.
If it is not returned to service by log entry, they wouldn't know who did the replacement. The only way they could raise an eye brow would be .01 hour after the annual.
 
Ron Levy said:
See R&W's post above about the misplaced financial priorities of some aircraft owners. But the fact that you find this behavior puzzling speaks well for your safety priorities.
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And you think they use new parts, ????
 
tmyers said:
That's why you smearing some old sludge on it first. Seriously though I consult with my a&p/AI before doing anything like that and have him look it over for The paperwork portion of it all.
Click to expand...

As it should be.

A couple annuals I do, I see new spark plugs in the engines I knew had old rusty plugs the year before. I will look for an entry, and find none, I will ask the owner to make the entry prior to me signing the annual off as airworthy.
 
Tom....if you sign off the annual....it doesn't matter. You just signed off everything with that entry.

Now....if you are after proving a principle with the owner.....I got that. :mad2:
 
Ron Levy said:
Seems to me you've posted a few such tales of woe yourself about planes people have brought to you for maintenance/inspection.
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That's doesn't say that I don't tell them if they are that stupid I don't want them as a customer.
There are a lot of new owners that should go to the big FBOs and let their wallets get a dose of realism. The only ones you hear about are the ones who whine about it.
 
Checkout_my_Six said:
Tom....if you sign off the annual....it doesn't matter. You just signed off everything with that entry.

Now....if you are after proving a principle with the owner.....I got that. :mad2:
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That's true, you sign it off as airworthy, you just bought all the prior maintenance, no matter who did it.

Now tell me, when will the FAA hold the IA responsible for having every entry of all maintenance in the logs.?

Read 91.405
 
dtuuri said:
I made no such assumptions, that's why I asked--him, not you. Go away.
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Clearly you made the assumption when you typed that the hole was probably circular. You didn't ask him, that would have been a private message. You asked on an open forum and I provided the answer. If you don't like the answers why don't you stop asking the questions?
 
Clark1961 said:
Clearly you made the assumption when you typed that the hole was probably circular.
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No, man. That was a response to your unsolicited comment. I was and still am curious what he meant.

Clark1961 said:
You didn't ask him, that would have been a private message. You asked on an open forum and I provided the answer. If you don't like the answers why don't you stop asking the questions?
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I quoted him and asked him a question about what he meant. You poked your nose in and jumped to conclusions and then accused me of being the one jumping, like you've done before. You perch over me like a hair-triggered turkey vulture on the brink of a wrong conclusion, hoping to catch me in a faux pas. Shoo!

dtuuri
 
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dtuuri said:
No, man. That was a response to your unsolicited comment. I was and still am curious what he meant.


I quoted him and asked him a question about what he meant. You poked your nose in and jumped to conclusions and then accused me of being the one jumping, like you've done before. You perch over me like a hair-triggered turkey vulture on the brink of a wrong conclusion, hoping to catch me in a faux pas. Shoo!
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Your spin fails once again. Most folks would learn but obviously you are incapable. Oh well.

I have explained to you how a hole can be stop drilled. If you didn't want to know that then you shouldn't have asked the question.

Now on to the deeper question, why do you think you can tell someone to go away on a public forum? You obviously don't have the power to accomplish that goal. Your continued attempts just point out your failure. Have a nice day and please feel free to continue your insanity.
 
Clark1961 said:
I have explained to you how a hole can be stop drilled. If you didn't want to know that then you shouldn't have asked the question.
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Only a snooty arrogant snob would think they need to explain it to a licensed A&P mechanic. Bye-bye.

dtuuri
 
Well that pretty much turned this thread into a pizzing contest. :)
 
Clark1961 said:
Your spin fails once again. Most folks would learn but obviously you are incapable. Oh well.

I have explained to you how a hole can be stop drilled. If you didn't want to know that then you shouldn't have asked the question.

Now on to the deeper question, why do you think you can tell someone to go away on a public forum? You obviously don't have the power to accomplish that goal. Your continued attempts just point out your failure. Have a nice day and please feel free to continue your insanity.
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I've stop drilled probably 10+ various cracks on the Flybaby over the last 3 years.

Any thoughts if it makes it stronger or weaker if you throw a pop rivet in the stop drilled hole? I usually do that then paint it to match because I think it looks better.

On one particular cowling crack I stop drilled it and then riveted a piece of aluminum on the back to reinforce that area. It seems to have worked out well.
 
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Tom-D said:
As it should be.

A couple annuals I do, I see new spark plugs in the engines I knew had old rusty plugs the year before. I will look for an entry, and find none, I will ask the owner to make the entry prior to me signing the annual off as airworthy.
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I see spark plugs like putting air in a tire, but that's just me and not what I do when it comes to airplane maintenance.
 
jesse said:
I've stop drilled probably 10+ various cracks on the Flybaby over the last 3 years.

Any thoughts if it makes it stronger or weaker if you throw a pop rivet in the stop drilled hole? I usually do that then paint it to match because I think it looks better.

On one particular cowling crack I stop drilled it and then riveted a piece of aluminum on the back to reinforce that area. It seems to have worked out well.
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Well, it makes it more difficult to inspect for further cracking.
 
Henning said:
Well, it makes it more difficult to inspect for further cracking.
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And if he leaves it unplugged other traffic might at least be able to hear him whistling across the center of the airport into the downwind.

dtuuri
 
Jaybird180 said:
I see spark plugs like putting air in a tire, but that's just me and not what I do when it comes to airplane maintenance.
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What is the difference between servicing and maintenance?
 
Tom-D said:
What is the difference between servicing and maintenance?
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From 14 CFR 1.1:
Maintenance means inspection, overhaul, repair, preservation, and the replacement of parts, but excludes preventive maintenance.
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Fuel, oil, and air are not "parts" to be replaced and thus not "maintenance" as long as no disassembly is required.
 
dtuuri said:
Interesting. What kind of damage was repaired? A dent? I once watched an old man spend an entire day and a half walking around tapping on a dented spinner gently with a hammer, working the dent completely away. It was a spinner off a Super Cub that was damaged when a Baron broke lose from a tug and went careening down the sloped ramp, solo, until it got stopped by the Cub's spinner. The FBO manager didn't want to buy the owner a new one, so called up an old retired mechanic for the job. This mechanic never bothered to get an A&P license. He was happy always letting someone else sign off his work, but really good with his hands. When the spinner was repainted it looked like brand new. The owner was happy. Btw, the tug driver got knocked out by the jackknifing wing of the Baron and went the other way heading straight for a closed hangar door. The same FBO manager witnessed the incident and saved the day by sprinting to the tug and turning the wheel just before the crash. Driver went to the hospital for observation, released later.

Btw, how (and why) do you "stop drill" a hole? :dunno:

dtuuri
Click to expand...
Ok, smarty. I meant several cracks which radiated from elongated drilled holes. Those holes were not factory compliant/as designed.

The spinner was literally riveted back into one piece with stiffeners added inside the bowl. The rear backing plate exhibited the same with the addition that nut plates had been placed to bridge several cracks. Those several nut plates didn't do anything except bridge the cracks. The 6 prop bolts were replaced when I replace with new the spinner and backing plate. The existing prop bolts were an incorrect length.

And it looked marvelous to the casual observer.
 
jesse said:
Any thoughts if it makes it stronger or weaker if you throw a pop rivet in the stop drilled hole? I usually do that then paint it to match because I think it looks better.

On one particular cowling crack I stop drilled it and then riveted a piece of aluminum on the back to reinforce that area. It seems to have worked out well.
Click to expand...

I've never done rivet design work so I don't know what a pop rivet does to a local stress field. There is a repair techique called metal stitching which does something similar to adding rivets.

As Henning notes, a rivet would delay detecting further propagation of the crack. That and dissimilar metal corrosion would be my main concerns.
 
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