The joke of component certification and EASA 145 (ancient stock sold as serviceable)

Funnily enough AS5194-0604 googles to… almost exactly nothing

Back to my earlier point: is the acceptance of these ancient parts really normal? Looking further back up the thread you have 20 year old circuit breakers supplied as “serviceable” and by implication brand new. In “normal life” as I know it, anything not specifically described as “used” must be brand new. I’ve been peripherally involved in aircraft maintenance since 2002 and more so since I went N-reg in 2005, but have not yet seen anything which runs counter to this principle. Could you sell somebody a brand new ~$5M PC12 which is full of 20 year old parts? I know Socata built my new TB20 with a load of used avionics (probably returned to them with intermittent faults, which were bench tested and tagged “serviceable”, and most of which failed within the 2 year warranty, thankfully) but I used to put that one down to the particular “culture” operating down there, not to a general aviation principle.

It seems obvious to me that the widespread existence of these old bits must be common knowledge to people working in the business, which leads to the question of where do they draw the line on acceptance of incoming goods. Would e.g. Pilatus not use obviously old parts in a new PC12, but use them when doing maintenance?

The problem of course is that all “serviceable” parts are, ahem, serviceable, even if they aren’t This isn’t cynical – it is at the core of any QA system. If a customer can return a “serviceable”-tagged part as unserviceable and you accept it back then your QA system has failed.

The particular company involved here is very reputable and are happy to just take stuff back for credit, and they must be doing quite a lot of it, because I am sure I am not the only fussy bastard around.

the paperwork you scanned certifies (a) conformance when manufactured in the dim and distant past and (b) serviceability when inspected in 2003.

That I understand but they were not sold by B-N in 2003. They were sold this week by a company who I am not naming, and with no indication of them being 15 years (IMHO more like 50 years) old.

If this was a one-off, that would be different, but I have had so much of this kind of thing recently. Half the aviation parts business seems to be flogging old stock, and most of it comes with a brand new EASA-1 form.

Those blue ones are aluminium; they are easy to get e.g. LAS.

But I would never use aluminium fittings in the fuel system. It would defeat the point of using fireproof hoses, and the fittings are not strong (they snap easily if overtightened). The transducer itself is made of diecast aluminium but is covered with a fire sleeve and is anyway a lot more bulky. In this case the fittings are inside the sleeve too but still I would not trust them.

I have used them extensively elsewhere but not in the fuel system.

Sorting through the mass of certificates relating to the TKS parts, I have found one which beats my previous (1968) record:

Can anyone beat 1960?

These parts (not supplied with the TKS system; sourced separately) came from the same company as those earlier in this thread.

And in this case here’s the current CofC, stating “new and unused”

“Unused” I agree with, but where is the line drawn on “new”? Battle of Britain?

The supplier found some stainless steel ones which they didn’t know they had