Flying Reporter Video Engine Condemned- Questions?

The Q to ask is why the American schools get 2k hrs when the / some Brit schools get 1k hrs.

Something is wrong…

the CAMO aren’t very keen on the idea either.

Well, not if they also work on your planes Each cylinder is about £1k, and with the trade margin being roughly 20%…

In my 18 years in this, and renting for a couple of years, I’ve seen some pretty unsavoury practices, surprisingly usually condoned by the school in order to keep costs down. I had one of the door locks on a PA28 jam locked – pretty serious, discovered while still on the ground, and the school “arranged” one of the mechanics in the firm they used to “take a look at it”. Obviously nothing wrong was found… The school is long gone.

Well the o360 is about as bullet proof as your going to get. Everything would be new including mags, starter, harness, alternator etc and my local school
wants to take this same approx.

However with the current overhaul at TBO regardless of the cost or quality of the initial overhaul it means in most commercially viable way is to overhaul as cheaply as possible.

So another school operated aircraft that I know well when overhauled recently 3 of the cylinders were simply reused with the other being overhauled. Starter, alternator all reused etc. Now I would be very surprised if this engine gives trouble free service but commercially it’s the most cost effective way of doing it.

It’s Bonkers

it means in most commercially viable way is to overhaul as cheaply as possible.

Maybe that is the reason you are getting only 1k hrs. With overhauls, like much else in life, you get what you pay for. There is for example some finesse in the way valve seats are ground. In the UK, there is only one engine shop which has a reasonable reputation…

Peter, I’m going to assume that is the shop that overhauls the engines for the RAF Grob 115 fleet.

Bathman

I can see the reasons why some might not like the idea of running the engine bottom end to 4000 hours but my guess is the beef about not being able to do it stops at EASA.

Controlled environment evidence should be available as I’m sure the UK CAA approved this practice for CSE aviation school aircraft in the late 60’ early 70’s. The problem is the aircraft has to stay within this operating environment or its back to manufacturers TBO.

I’m not surprised the CAMO did not like the idea as they would have had no technical data from an approved company / authority to comply with. After all the CAMO simply assures compliance with approved data.

A_and_C, Nicholson McLaren is the one I was thinking of.

Never used them myself; I use Barrett Precision in Oklahoma but they can’t issue an EASA-1 form.

Peter

That’s what I was thinking .

I run the group in question. I (we) are perfectly happy with the engineering service and advice from our maintainer, who have provided thoroughly satisfactory service to the aircraft and group for some 30 years.

Jon’s video does not contain all of the detail or the process which led to our decision. I don’t propose to go into that detail, but what you see on the screen isn’t the whole picture.

It was certainly no surprise to me or the group that a 2,200+ hour engine reached the end of its life. Unwelcome news, yes, news we hoped wouldn’t come for another couple of years, yes. Surprise, no.

Likewise, the finances are not a surpsise to us. We know how much money we have in the bank, we know why we have that amount and we knew what the costs would be when the engine expired. We also have very nice avionics and a bare metal respray only a few years ago, neither of which were cheap. We are where we are.

The aeroplane will be flying again very soon. I don’t see the problem, things break, money is spent, aeroplane goes on.

jollyrog wrote:

The aeroplane will be flying again very soon.

Good news – I always enjoy Jon’s videos