The reason I asked that is because I had a prop strike (pothole) in 2002, with just 1hr on the aircraft.
The inspection and a new prop came to £20k (insurance - Haywards - paid up immediately).
But when in 2008 I sent the engine to the USA for the SB569 crank swap they found a lot of corrosion inside the cylinders. In their view, this could not have happened during my 6 years' flying because I was flying once a week, never went more than 2 weeks without a flight, and almost no flight was under 1hr. Together with a known history of Socata (at the time) installing a load of improperly stored engines which were corroded internally, it thus appears that
Why would they do that? They were a major Lycoming distributor. They also told me, some years later, that they knew all about the Socata issue but didn't want (as a Lyco agent) to get involved in it.
Sometimes there are more players in a game than one is aware of 
We've got no reason to suspect our shock load tests were suspect. Just heard that they are investigating someone else's allegations
Not Oxford, Wokingham.
If you think your shock load tests were suspect, that's a big worry, safety-wise.
Was the shock load done by the well known now-defunct firm near Oxford by any chance?
Peter, many thanks for the response. Your comments regards screws etc make perfect sense and I had suspected this. However as we have had 2 prop strikes / shock loads in the space of a year Id like to see the paper work associated with this.
Regards "something dodgy going on", I've heard on the grapevine that the CAA is investigating allegations on the (now defunct) shop that did our shock load tests. I suspect if the CAA want the paperwork and we don't have then they can demand these from our old maintainers.
For option 3 it appears we wont get the Form 1s. Im personally yet to understand why it will cost thousands to locate these, are they not help with the work packs etc?
(Caveat: I have never run a maintenance company)
The traceability docs (EASA 1, 8130-3 etc) do normally go into the work pack. Where else can they go? In the work pack for my TAS605 system I have the 8130-3 forms, for the major parts.
But you don't really need these forms after the work is done. They have value if somebody suspects that something dodgy was going on e.g. the shop re-using scrapped parts supported by forms which came with other parts; this is obviously easy for anything that doesn't carry a serial number. There have been some high profile cases of this in the UK. After a part is installed, the form has (in theory) no value, because the part is no longer new and a Part 145 company is needed to generate a fresh one.
But I think the only parts for which keeping the forms is really important are major bits like the engine, the prop, major landing gear parts, etc. Almost nobody keeps the forms for the small bits like screws, wire, fuses... and anyway many of those come in say a packet of 100 covered by a single form, so to do it 100% diligently you would have to photocopy that same form for every work pack in which that item is used.
The work pack should still reference the form by number, so there is traceability back to it, and a copy of the form will (in theory) be on file at the component manufacturer.
If a shop won't give you the work pack itself, it could just be that they didn't bother to keep any records of what they did. That is bad, and they could get busted for that, but it's a problem for you really only if you want to do a registry transfer. Most old planes have incomplete maintenance records....
Sounds like the German model is a lot more sensible regards providing documentation with the invoice. Ive rarely/never seen anything to support an invoice.
I think Achim happens to have a good relationship with his CAMO. I don't think that is particularly normal in Germany any more than in the UK. He is a smart customer and the people he deals with can see they won't get away with anything.
If you ask for the work pack before the work commences, they will give it to you with the (paid) invoice.
What I used to do with one firm I used for the Annuals for a few years was I borrowed the work pack, took it outside and photographed it on the tarmac in the car park. It took only minutes... They were happy because it didn't cost them any time or money. And the Annual work pack on a TB20 is c. 200 pages because it includes the MM pages with all the boxes to tick, and obviously all the boxes are always ticked 
This business is like the new American law about Conflict Minerals - the biggest load of bollox since ISO9000. My US distributor tells me that we are supposed to locate the gold smelter in which the gold on our Chinese-made bare PCBs is smelted, and prove the gold comes from an approved country (in Africa probably). It's a box ticking exercise...
They've also told me they are obliged to notify who our new CAMO is
Nonsense.
Re the landing gear failure: it is quite normal for maintainers to not do proper lubing. They tend to use liquid oil, which is far easier than greasing which needs dismantling, cleaning, etc. This is probably the main reason why retractables get such a bad press on the aviation chat sites. Many old retractables have a landing gear which is shagged, due to crap lubrication and sometimes also due to people flying to filthy strips. It's always going to be hard to get this job done right. I used to pay 3k for an Annual in which all the boxes were ticked (and these definitely included using grease) but the company wanted about £300 extra for actually doing it with grease! So you may have to do a "deal" like that no matter where you go.
Interesting thread and somewhat relevant to my situation. Following a litany of maintenance issues, the piece de la resistance being this
http://www.aaib.gov.uk/cms_resources.cfm?file=/Cessna%20R182%20Skylane%20G-WIFE%2003-13.pdf - we are in the process of changing our maintainer/CAMO.
Whilst not really parting on good terms, we have made a point of paying everything in full, even though we have had to incur quite a bit of costs getting remedial work done else where.
We have taken possession of our logbooks but they are proving difficult with regard to releasing all the maintenance documentation. I received the following options from them today;
If you require ALL paperwork including all Form 1s then this will take us weeks to go through every job, every part issued and then track back through archives for Release notes. The cost for you would be prohibitive – into £thousands rather than £ hundreds.
We can gather together all the workpacks back to Sept 2007 and photo copy them for you. Cost £250 – this would take a full day to do.
We can gather all the info and let you take it away with you, after signing for it. Cost £75.
For option 3 it appears we wont get the Form 1s. Im personally yet to understand why it will cost thousands to locate these, are they not help with the work packs etc?
They've also told me they are obliged to notify who our new CAMO is. They dont say who they are obliged to notify but it would be reasonable to assume they mean the CAA. I spoke with our local CAA office today who advised they werent aware of any obligation on the old CAMO.
Sounds like the German model is a lot more sensible regards providing documentation with the invoice. Ive rarely/never seen anything to support an invoice.
[URL fixed - Peter]
Good point Peter. I had been wondering if the original shop keep records 'just in case' they (or I) need them, or just sling them as Im not their problem anymore. AD compliance is pretty well documented in the records (the L-Akte Achim described).
It really is a quandry. Out of the frying pan into the fire possibly!
j
Well obviously I agree. It's OK if you make it clear before you start that you want all work packs copied. For example I did that with a firm I used for my Annuals (2 firms actually, over a few years).
The diplomatic problem is if you don't make that clear and then come back after a few years and ask for them.
I had a big showdown with one "well known" engine/component overhaul firm who absolutely refused, citing several so obviously crap excuses that one had to laugh. In the end I threw away their £800 D3000 magneto overhaul and did it again by Quality Aircraft Accesories in Tulsa, USA.
BUT it is difficult to ask for the work pack without appearing to be aggressive.
Wow, that is totally unacceptable. I would never do anything with a shop that wouldn't give me all documentation right away without being asked for it. At any time I have to be in a position to choose shops or sell the aircraft without even talking to any maintenance shop that worked on my aircraft.
Last time I noticed some discrepancies in the wire plan of an avionics change, I complained and immediately got a revised diagram. Nothing less is acceptable.
One thing to consider carefully is whether the existing shop has anything that you may need one day.
For example when I bought my plane in 2002, from Air Touring, they did some avionics work on it. Later, as I was learning about the "ownership game" I asked them for some work packs. They gave me some but refused to give me the avionics ones, saying the design was their intellectual property.
One example was the installation of a KI229 RMI, with a switch selecting the VOR needle to run off NAV1 or NAV2.
Now I know that this is pretty trivial to do (the KI229 can take in the composite NAV signal so you just need to switch that, plus (not so trivial) you also need to switch the ILS ENERGISE wire so the needle gets parked when an ILS frequency is selected on the radio) but they would not give it to me. Notwithstanding the fact that it took them a couple of goes to make it work...
Years later, after they went bust, I was offered a load of papers by the administrator, and in there was some of this stuff.
You probably don't want to say goodbye to service/work records like that.
BUT it is difficult to ask for the work pack without appearing to be aggressive. So I suspect most people do lose a lot of service history when they move away from a firm, because they understandably don't want to upset them.
Whether this affects the market value of a plane depends on what it is. Avionics, probably not. But AD compliance, definitely hugely so (unless the buyer is stupid and had not got a competent engineer to do a prebuy) especially if the compliance cannot be verified visually and by component S/N.
