|
 Savvy
Owner Notebook:
When To Fire
Your A&P
If the A&P who maintains your aircraft turns
out to be anything less than competent, knowledgeable and
professional, you'd be wise to fire him and find another mechanic.
by Mike Busch,
A&P/IA (mike.busch@savvyaviator.com)
 A
recurring theme in these newsletters is that aircraft owners need to
be very careful about who they allow to work on their aircraft.
One
of my AVweb columns discusses ten attributes I look for when
choosing a mechanic, and it's also a subject I also discuss at some
length in each of my aircraft owner seminars.
Despite best efforts, however, owners sometimes discover that
the A&P working on their airplane turns out to be lacking in
knowledge, skill or professionalism. When that happens, many owners
lack the courage and self-confidence to do what needs to be done:
Fire the mechanic, get the airplane out of his shop, and take it to
another A&P who knows what he's doing!
Unprofessional Behavior
Recently I was reminded of this by a disturbing email I received from
a couple who own a 1978 Piper Turbo Lance:
 We have been
maintenance-involved owners ever since we were lucky
enough to have a mechanic in Texas who actually refused to work
on any airplane unless the owner participated. We were
extremely lucky to have found this man. He believed in
owner education, kept a careful eye on us as we learned
about our airplane, and took the time to teach us how to
do things properly and safely.
We recently moved to San
Diego and have been searching for a similar experience
ever since. We haven't found it, but we finally did find a shop
that would at least tolerate our participation. We had used this shop before for a fairly extensive job
-
an engine removal for a failing engine mount - and we
had been lucky enough to have a thorough, careful
mechanic working on our airplane. But a recent
experience there drove home the wisdom of being an
involved owner.
We returned to this shop for
troubleshooting of an electrical feedback problem. The
work
included replacement of an ignition harness and a check
of the magnetos. Unfortunately, the mechanic who'd
worked on our airplane
before had moved on, and this time we were assigned another
A&P
who (we subsequently discovered) hated his job, cut corners, and was incredibly ham-handed.
 This mechanic agreed to let us assist with the
installation of the new ignition harness on one side of
the engine while he worked on the other side. We first
became concerned when he did not
use any of the new Adel clamps that came with the ignition
harness (or even reuse any of the old clamps) on the
side of the engine on which he was working. While we
had carefully routed the wires on our side and struggled
with the clamps, he had simply tied them up with nylon tie
wraps. Lucky for us, the shop manager called him on this before
we were forced to complain. We later discovered that
this mechanic had
routed the ignition wires through a hole in the baffle
without the necessary grommet, and just
left them resting on the sharp metal edge.
At this point we
should have asked the shop manager for a different mechanic.
Unfortunately, we didn't, and things just got worse. The
mechanic
and the manager took the mags out to check them. Then the
manager went off to do something else, and we watched in
horror for over three hours while the mechanic tried
to manhandle the mags back into place, crushing the
points and necessitating their removal and retiming.
When we finally ran down the manager, described
what we'd seen the mechanic do, and begged the manager to
retime and reinstall the mags, the response we got from
the manager was, "That
is why owners should not be in the shop."
Ultimately, the manager did as we
asked, proclaimed that he "could live with the timing,"
and kicked the airplane out without fixing the feedback
problem or rechecking the mags once they were installed. The
airplane seemed okay the initial run-up, but the first
time we taxied out to fly the airplane, the left mag
failed badly during the run-up and we scrubbed the
flight.
This brings us to our predicament: Do we return to the shop that is blaming us for the
failure and ask them to make good the mag problem and to
take the time spent manhandling our mags off the bill?
Is it possible that this mechanic has done real damage, and
if so what do we do? Finally, do you know of any
owner-friendly mechanics in the Southern California
area? We will be returning to Texas for our annual, but
in the meantime we have to find somebody here in San
Diego.
Arrgggghhhhh! Please help.
/signed/
Shannon and Bryan
I replied to Shannon and Bryan that under no circumstances should they consider
taking their Turbo Lance back to the same shop. "Fool me once, shame on you;
fool me twice, shame on me." Instead, I gave them the names and contact
information for a couple of maintenance-savvy aircraft owner friends based in
the San Diego area, and suggested they contact these folks for referrals of
competent, knowledgeable, professional and owner-friendly A&Ps in the area. I
realize that no aircraft owner enjoys paying for maintenance twice, but
sometimes the wisest course is to cut your losses, chalk it up to tuition, and
move on.
Lack of Systems Knowledge
Yet Shannon and Bryan can consider themselves quite lucky compared to another
owner of a 1978 Piper Turbo Lance. His name is Lyndon, he's based just north of
Dallas, and he owns the airplane in partnership with several other pilots. Lyndon wrote me about the
succession of painful and costly maintenance
screw-ups that motivated him to sign up for the seminar I gave in Dallas last
month:
Our airplane suffered a total electrical failure
shortly after takeoff in IMC conditions. Fortunately,
the pilot was very
experienced and, thinking that the problem might have
been an over-voltage relay trip, he cycled the master
switch off for a few seconds and then back on again, and
electrical power was restored. The pilot got back on the
ground successfully, and we put the airplane in the
shop. Our A&P/IA agreed that an over-voltage trip was
the likely cause, but subsequently returned the airplane
to us and reported that he could not find anything wrong
with the electrical system. This was unsettling, to say
the least.
We experienced several additional intermittent
electrical system problems of the same nature. Again,
the shop was unable to locate the problem.
 Then,
while en route on a trip, we got a low-voltage alarm on
our JPI EDM-700 engine monitor. (It's a wonderful
instrument that has saved our bacon several times.) We
immediately shed all electrical loads that weren't
absolutely necessary (shut down radios, etc.), but when
we tried to extend the landing gear, the battery died
while the gear was still in transit. We performed the
emergency gear extension procedure -- turning a valve to
dump hydraulic pressure and letting the gear free-fall
with a little help from springs in the nose gear -- but
the nose gear and right main gear did not lock
overcenter and collapsed on landing. We had a
prop strike but fortunately not much other damage.
The engine was
removed by a different shop for teardown inspection, and a new prop was ordered.
During the engine removal, the new shop found that the
alternator field wire was just bouncing around in the
terminal lug and was not properly crimped -- the only
thing keeping it in place was the rubber insulation boot
that hid the bad crimp from view. I could not believe
that the first shop did not inspect the wiring when
repeatedly troubleshooting the electrical problem.
From
this point forward, the other owners appointed me to
monitor maintenance issues, and so I spent lots of time at the
shop trying to get more involved. The airplane was being
repaired, and I told the shop owner and mechanics
that I wanted to do whatever was necessary to make absolutely sure
that the airplane would not suffer another landing gear
collapse, especially the nose gear! We worked on the
electrical system together and we went over all the
wiring, fuses, and circuit breakers and found no other
loose wiring.
I told the mechanics that I would need to rely on them to check the landing
gear mechanism as I had no experience in that area. I watched them
swing the landing gear while the airplane was on jacks
and it seemed to work properly. I even discussed with the
other partners the possibility of having the
Piper Dealer on the field double check the landing gear,
but the other owners did not want to pay for another
inspection on the same items that were just repaired by
an FAA-approved repair station.
Well, you probably guessed it: About
six months later, we had another nose gear collapse
during a
normal landing with a CFI on board giving a BFR to one
of the owners. The
verdict for the collapse was the nose gear bushings were
worn out, and a part in the nose gear downlock mechanism
that had been replaced in 1983 to comply with AD
81-24-07 broke, allowing
the nose gear to collapse. (That's what the A&P/IA told
me.) FAA inspector said it was a maintenance
problem.
After more downtime for repairs, we were all
pretty excited when the airplane finally came out of the
shop with a fresh annual inspection. Our excitement was
short-lived, however, when on the first takeoff after
maintenance we
discovered that we had terrible engine surging just at
rotation on takeoff and the airplane engine lost 50% or
more power. It was a little dicey but we aborted the
takeoff and got it back on the runway and stopped.
Troubleshooting by the shop diagnosed it as a problem
with the #2 fuel injector nozzle. The nozzle was cleaned and returned
to the engine after being swapped with another injector.
On the next
takeoff, the power seemed fine and we seemed
to have a normal takeoff, except that the fuel flow at
takeoff power was indicating at red-line (41 gph)
instead of its usual 34 gph. Also
the JPI engine monitor showed the EGT for two cylinders
off the top of the scale, and a "DIF +200" alarm was flashing
(indicating an abnormally large difference between the
hottest and coldest EGT). We requested an
immediate return to the airport and the tower cleared us
to land on any runway. After landing, we saw raw fuel
all over the nose cowling. Upon decowling the engine, we discovered that
the mechanics left some fuel lines loose and fuel was
spraying into the engine compartment in flight. (The JPI
saved us again!)
The loose fuel lines were tightened and the fuel
leak was resolved. But we still were experiencing
intermittent surging at takeoff power. We tried troubleshooting
the problem for several
months, as the surging would come and go. We took the
airplane to other shops, who installed a new #2 injector
nozzle and removed and cleaned the throttle body, but
the problem still occurred although it happened less frequently.
Finally, we had all the rubber seals in the upper
deck lines replaced, and we replaced all the fuel
injector nozzles with new GAMIjectors. Finally, the
problems disappeared. We sent the old injectors to GAMI,
who tested them on their flow bench and found that the
#2 nozzle was popping and spitting (despite the fact
that it was a brand new factory nozzle).
The airplane seems to be fine now, but we went
through five maintenance shops and two gear collapses before getting the
airplane straightened out maintenance-wise.
/signed/
Lyndon
The lesson from Lyndon's experience is that owners need to make a
real effort to seek out maintenance personnel who are knowledgeable
and experienced with the specific aircraft systems they're working
on. Clearly the shops who worked on the Turbo Lance's landing gear
were not up-to-speed on that system; having the gear checked by the
Piper dealer would probably have been a very smart move. Also,
months of chasing down the injector nozzle problems might have been
saved by going straight to GAMI, a firm that probably knows more
about injector nozzles than anyone else in the industry.
When choosing a mechanic to work on your airplane, "time in type"
is a lot more important than "total time."
| Do you have a maintenance-related
"war story" that you'd like to share with fellow
aircraft owners? If you do, I'd
love to hear from you. The most interesting stories
I receive each month will be rewarded with highly prized Savvy
Aviator coffee mugs, so please include your
shipping address. Also be sure to let me know if you'd like
me to "change the names to protect the innocent"
when sharing your story. |
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