I’ve been ordering spare parts from Volvo for about 2000 € per month for the last 6 months or so. It’s for boat engines derived from the standard Volvo 5 cylinder common rail turbo diesel.
Most parts (90%?) are the standard car parts where a sticker with a new part number is put onto the original car part number. That new number justifies a 100% price premium. If there was an aircraft engine from Volvo, it would be 200% at least.
Obviously I remove those stickers and in the future use the car part number but I have to get each part once before that. Tedious work that pays off in the long run but very rarely in the specific situation where one part is urgently needed.
Of those standard car parts, I would say 70% are standard industry parts so if I find the manufacturer and its part number, I can even save another 50% usually, sometimes even 80% (alternator 650 € from Volvo Penta, 150 € from an OEM).
I bet Socata just asked Parker to generate a new part number. A very easy way to make a lot of profit… sorry, to “protect” customers.
I think one issue here is that the “new” pump is probably 15 years old. That alone won’t help with tracing it, obviously…
Clearly it is this one
here (local copy).
The reservoir is now plastic, but one can specify lots of different ones and one has to anyway transplant the Socata custom modded one from the old pump to the new one.
The above photo has been photoshopped where the wires enter the motor. If you look closely you can see it
The disti could not even work out a price. They put various P/Ns into a computer and if it doesn’t recognise them, they cannot do anything. I wonder if anybody here has connections inside Parker?
Another update (in case somebody finds this thread one day – David has the EuroGA SEO really perfected 
) -
The original (2001) pump contains what was then a valid Parker P/N for an off the shelf pump
108 BI C 19 A L 4 V T
The current pump has no Parker P/N on it. It has a custom label which is stuck over the standard Parker label. I should have peeled it off before installation but it’s too late now 
This is the current ordering code guide
Obviously I can’t find a 2001 version of this guide, but together with the pressure values on the new label it’s not hard to work out what the old pump does. There are two potential P/Ns
108 BI C 19 A LL 4 V 12 12
108 BI C 19 A LL 4 V 29 12
with the second one covering the specified pressure officially. I am trying to get pricing but it seems that nobody wants to go near it….
I believe the 641634 is a code which Parker stuck on the pump which when mentioned in an enquiry to Parker directs them to a Socata exclusivity agreement, and they refuse to quote!
Off topic – Achim do you order direct from Volvo? I’ve found far better prices going through skandix.
I order everywhere, whatever gives me the best price under the time constraints I usually have a mix of mission-critical-vessel-out-of-operation fires and preventive stocking up of whatever part might break one day. Skandix is a good resource for some parts. Lately I’ve been far too busy with those mission critical problems after having lost two engines — one through water ingress into the cylinder block (though the exhaust) and the other due to the absolutely impossible scenario of the drive belt snapping and being sucked in by the timing belt, causing this one to jump two teeth and turn the cylinder head into shrapnel and at the same time damaging the crankshaft oil seal (which I discovered only after rebuilding the cylinder head!).
very interesting reading all the stuff you did Peter! very impressive research great reading
i know how u must feel cause i had a few years some issues with the “powerpack” on my arrow 4
there also the electric moter comes from Mercruiser (to operate normaly the Z drive) and that is than matched to a Piper casting for the gears for the pump and valves.
in my case it was a faulty Quardring (tiny pourous when hot could only see it under microscope) in the shuttlevalve that gave me trouble.
could not trace it at all and no one wanted to sell me one.
i found one nevertheless with Trelleborg and did the job. i made a small rig outside the plane with press gauges etc to check the system (for press hold and operating) as it was too much hasle always to refit the pump to the aircraft for try and error.
i was even prepared to make my own piston for the shuttlevalve if i could not found suitiable o-ring but that was not needed.
i also agree with ue judgement on shops i got quoates from changing microswitches to changing slave cylinders, new powerpacks……etc (but nothing under 1k to 8k) the lot……..
they all seem to only go by previous errors they come across in there shops, without proper knowing or systematic testing the root of the fault
I have just got this from one of the Parker distis – White House Products Ltd. whp.co.uk
108 BI C 19 A LL 4 V 12 12 £715.00
108 BI C 19 A LL 4 V 29 12 £715.00
delivery for both is about 7 weeks from time of order
The pricing is not way out of order compared to the Socata price of €1300 (all prices are plus VAT). In fact the Socata markup is amazingly reasonable
Could somebody in the USA phone Parker and while appearing slightly stupid (should be easy to do convincingly given this particular business discipline ) and under the guise of trying to replace an old pump, try to get the current P/N for the 2001 P/N: 108 BI C 19 A L 4 V T ? And verify whether the new part numbers above have three wires coming out of them?
The second P/N above looks definitely equivalent to the Socata pump – provided the 3 wire arrangement can be verified.
Evidently the Parker dealer above was buying it from another Parker dealer because I have just got this
Update: the pressure switch was replaced and immediately the intermittent delays in the UP operation disappeared. This is how it should be:
So, after all this, I had two separate issues. One was a shagged gear pump (possibly just the motor, maybe with shorted turns in the windings) which was sometimes drawing a heavy current, and the other was a dodgy pressure switch which instead of opening at 1600psi was opening at much lower pressures (I suspect as low as 50psi) but only for a second or so.
The reason I think it was opening at very low pressures was because all three gear legs are easy to move by hand.
If the gear leg(s) are stiff, then you have a whole pile of other problems, and are cooking yourself a whole load of “fun” for the future.
A final update:
I ordered the above P/N from Parker. Some of their distis quoted about £750 and some quoted the above £445. Fairly obviously this is somebody quoting an end user price and somebody quoting a trade price. The trade price makes sense because this is hardly an end user product…
After some weeks I got a very strange phone call from Parker themselves, checking what this was to be used in. They said the have had only one order ever for this P/N and it was from the owner of a “homebuilt aircraft”, and after that they were banned (by who?) from selling into the aircraft market. Well, hardly, because they sell it to Socata and others who stick a new label on it, attach longer wires, and mark it up 3×. Of course my application was a hydraulic ramp on a boat, nothing to do with aircraft, so they agreed to supply it.
I thought the “only ever” was a strange comment because that configuration (e.g. blocking both ways) is exactly what is needed for operating any hydraulic mechanism which needs to stop where it was when the pump was turned off, and not drift back as the fluid leaks back through the pump.
I wondered why that guy said “homebuilt”. Are these pumps used on say Lancairs? A quick google/images digs out this (local copy) and here it is
They seem to be using pressure switches for both UP and DOWN end-travel-stopping, whereas Socata use one only for UP stopping (the landing gear squeezes rubber bungs). It looks like Lancair don’t mechanically lock their gear when it’s down or, if they do, they don’t incorporate switches to turn off the gear pump when the gear is locked.
The above Lancair PDF contains a P/N of 637715 whereas mine is 649245. However, bear in mind that that Lancair doc is from 2004, and Parker changed their part numbering scheme since then.
One of the funny things about GA is how often you go up the same road as somebody else before you, while everybody pretends they have never been there
I wonder how Lancair buy this pump when Parker ostensibly refuse to sell it into the aviation market? The “Marine” sticker is a clue…
And, after about 3 months, mine has just turned up:
So I better buy a boat to install it on
In reality it’s going to go on a shelf as a spare, since I installed the Socata-labelled version earlier this year.
