The reality is that most owners don’t have the option of changing engineers. If they use companies they can hardly say to the company “that guy is no good; I want this one to work on my plane”. If you are N-reg and organise your own maintenance in your own hangar then you can tell the man to do it while wearing yellow underpants, but few owners have that option. Even if you have three companies at your airfield, you can easily (over a few years) fall out with all three – unless you tolerate bad work with a smile.
These particular screws get chewed up because they are stainless steel and very soft. To move them without any significant damage would take a lot of care. I know – I do it myself at every Annual. About 100 of them holding the wingtips… You have to loosen them manually (taking great care to keep the driver lined-up), use a power driver to unscrew them, and when replacing them you have to start them manually, use a power driver to go most of the way, and then finally tighten them manually.
I am now getting some extremely good quotes from China, albeit for a larger quantity than I suspect a syndicate can be put together for. So I will just bag them up 100-up and flog them off on Ebay. Even at a 2x markup they will still be really cheap.
Curiously enough they are much cheaper still at 15mm overall length. The Socata 14mm length is nonstandard. On the TB, the 15mm screw will fit everywhere the 14mm is used, but I think most people would not buy it even if it was half the price.
Sorry, the pictures upload was not so great.
Peter
I’m interested. No immediate need but useful to have as spares. Let us know when available.
There is no doubt TORX is better but IMHO most people would be too afraid to use them because their maintainer is going to give them hassle over it, which is probably what would happen because it takes only one anally retarded person to see it…
Vic – it looks like you machined the heads off. That is fine for a small quantity but e.g. the wingtips have a few dozen screws each, alone. Also the corner radius would need to be done very skillfully. The Chinese screws are cheaper than dirt, frankly. At work, we bought 300k little springs for 1p each. The UK made ones were 20p each, 10k qty. The 300k will last us till the end of time but it doesn’t matter.
sure, you can´t do them on a lathe for 10 p. I wanted to know if standard Torx depth could turn out OK for the smaller head. I mean you could have Torxes made as well for those who can work on their own aircraft. Or who want to show the results of retarded certified workshop blokes and how they had to find a workaround for preserving their aircraft for the next decades.
Judging from your worries about “illegal” mods as a whole I believe in my country the examiners seem to be a bit more relaxed when it comes to non standard improvements. Again, a lot depends on the competence of the CAMO examiner and on his faith in competence of the aircraft owner.
Talking about certification,there is a lot of criticism now in USA about their FAA and their lack of competence and questionable attitude. When it comes to certifying new engines this seems to be easier with EASA than with FAA, they say, just for a change from EASA bashing here. In the US they point to Europe being a lot more active in modern technologies for aviation.
I see a URL to this thread has just got posted on the (registered members only) Socata owners group. Usually any references to EuroGA there are deleted but it is still there a few hours later, so maybe we might get more interest now.
Usually any references to EuroGA there are deleted
or Andrew is on holidays 
a while ago there was a discussion on soc.org why some posts got deleted – maybe A. changed his policy …
Hi Peter.
I’m interested to be in your bulk buy. I also have a couple of friends here in Australia who would be in also. I’ll chase them up.
If I could get together an order for say 2000, the price should improve a lot from the previously quoted GBP 1.70 plus 20% VAT.
And the TBs have lots of these screws. They are used on the wingtips, on the two inspection covers at the base of the windscreen, and probably other places.
I purchased 10 screws in March this year direct from Socata France. They were €4.83 each. I checked the price today and they are still quoting the same.
As a matter of interest, since the note on the Socata users web site about the screw prices, this morning AK made a coment that he has had a discussion with Michel at Daher re these screws. It will be interesting to hear the outcome.
