I can gladly report that I passed the SB632 desaster without findings.. Engine was still under Lycoming warranty. Downtime due to my insistence to use maintenance at the Lyco distributor at Kassel, Germany was about a month.
https://blog.aopa.org/aopa/2017/08/25/the-shameful-lycoming-rod-bushing-ad-affair/
It’s good to see that Mike Busch agrees with me — this SB is a disaster, the totally wrong approach, doing more harm than good and Lycoming are crooks.
Peter wrote:
Lyco are not going to make money out of this
Really? Maybe they want to you to think that way but I am sure the opposite is true. A conrod set for 6-cylinder sells at $5,150 and of that money, at least 75% are not direct part costs so contribute to Lycoming’s overall budget. A lot of them will be sold to owners, most engines will be out of warranty.
In this business, the actual parts costs are only a small fraction of the list price of the part. Lycoming pay the parts costs, we pay the list price.
Their job is to have suitable QA which they obviously don’t. Measuring external parts is the mother of all QA. I hope that legal action will be taking that exposes them for taking shortcuts for their financial benefit or at least show gross incompetence.
Lyco are not going to make money out of this, especially by the time they have done loads of under the table settlements with people suing them for compensation. They did loads of those during the crankshaft saga days. Always under an NDA (nondisclosure agreement). They don’t give you money (AFAIK) but they offer you a new or remanufactured engine.
Silvaire wrote:
When and if they don’t catch a batch of slightly undersize wrist pin bushings from a vendor, resulting in a slightly loose press fit into the rods, it obviously creates a sustantial expense for them.
When with the help of the FAA, they force their customers to replace 20% of all rods of all engines overhauled/delivered by them in a 3 years timespan, the money that changes hands is called “revenue” not “expense”.
They should be crucified for that. Get a part made for $0.5 and use their authority to sell it for $20 but couldn’t be bothered to have any sort of QA.
This link describes Lycoming’s parts replacement and extended warranty policy, and as reported on Avweb and etc there is in reality some coverage. See items 10-13. When and if they don’t catch a batch of slightly undersize wrist pin bushings from a vendor, resulting in a slightly loose press fit into the rods, it obviously creates a sustantial expense for them. Little QA mistakes on easy stuff can create big hassle.
wonder if the outsourcing director at Lycoming will receive an extra bonus this year, for the increase in revenue he has generated for Lycoming?
Strange though – TCM had a similar issue with the IO550 engines, now it’s Lycoming…. Hmm…….
If they were publicly traded, they would have to inform the market about an unexpected increase in earnings for 2017.
This statement from Lycoming was posted on a US site:
