172driver wrote:
Our C210 had a hard landing and a very minor prop strike, but once opened, certain items had to be replaced irrespective of damage.
I believe it is common that in many (most?) engines some things have to be replaced at a chock load inspection, no matter what.
My IO-360 had £3500 worth of bits that were mandatory replacement when inspected last year. Labour for the job was £4000+VAT
Peter wrote:
All the cases where people are grounded for months are in the “usual GA maintenance” situation where the company is totally disorganised and works for the customer who screams the loudest down the phone.
That is not at all how my CAMO and maintenance work. Practically all delays we have had is waiting for parts. While this should not be a primary problem here, still manufacturers of props have lead times, so do engine manufacturers in case the engine is not re-usable. We never know that.
The guestimate comes from different factors.
- First the airplane needs to get released by the TSB. This should happen this week, probably tomorrow.
- Then the insurance claim has to be done, which means a total assessment of the damage has to be done, parts located and ordered, e.t.c. so that the offer for repair can be issued.
- Then the insurance has to accept the offer and give the go ahead for the repair to proceed.
- Once all that is done, we can start sending off the engine, order the prop (which have up to 2 months lead time as I understand) and so on.
- The work for a shock load inspection is about that, yes, but also the company needs to have capacity. We will talk to them as soon as we know when the engine will be available. If it is really only an inspection, 1-2 weeks at the shop is realistic, if it turns out into more, then the situation can change totally.
- Finally we need the shop to have capacity to put everything back together and do the necessary tests e.t.c.
6 months is conservative, I’d be happy if it is less.
Antonio wrote:
Well, it seems you have clear ideas to eventually get your ducks in a row.
Well, thanks to a really good team who back me up the answer to this is yes. I had a pretty clear idea on what has to be done about 3 hours after I had been notified of the incident, including a almost 1 hour phone conversation with the maintenance guy on a Saturday evening. Having people who will go that lenght and who have proven to be very trustworthy in the past makes all the difference.
Antonio wrote:
On a more personal side: we all make mistakes. Obviously you make sure every pilot that flies the aircraft knows the “thumb” trick. Unless the pilot is someone who is systematically troublesome, I sure wish you and him can work out a prompt emotional recovery. We can’t afford to lose pilots to GA!
Absolutely. We are a bunch of Mooney lovers who operate this plane and this guy is no exception. Everyone who comes onto our team undergoes a difference training which clearly stresses this as we are very aware of this. Yet it can happen. The pilot in question has a lot of recent experience and it was just his day to have bad luck. We certainly will try to get him back on track.
Antonio wrote:
However the conclusion after past discussions personally and online is that it is risky business to go around after a prop strike. I guess pilot instinct is to pull up into the air if something does not feel right at landing. After all that is engrained in our training. In this case all these cases it probably saved the airplane.
This is a thing we will discuss indeed. I am waiting to get official word on a couple of things here and we will certainly discuss this in depth. I agree that a go around with a broken prop and possibly damaged engine is certainly more a reflex action rather than something we decide consciously. I will certainly be interested to hear the TSB’s take on this.
All in all I am quite relieved that while we have a major inconvenience it ended with a normal landing and particularly without any people injured or killed. That is the main thing. Airplanes and things in general can always be replaced. People can not.
Airborne_Again wrote:
believe it is common that in many (most?) engines some things have to be replaced at a chock load inspection, no matter what.
Yes I remeber magnetos etc. but that is not the expensive part and paid by insurance. The issue is that many parts are so low quality that after running for 5 min they will no longer pass any visual inspection. Then you open up the engine, those parts look bad and you have to replace them as “premature wear” at your own cost. If you did not open up the engine those parts would have gone forever but once they get inspected they are done. So the actual financial damage is done by looking at them. I remember Jason once posted that according to his turbine engine plan be was not allowed to have the engines opened for any inspection for exactly that reason…
It varies, and not all shops implement the list, but when I had mine in 2002, it was stuff like mandatory governor overhaul, and a long list all the way down to the conrod bolts (which aren’t cheap).
Mine was done by a now-defunct outfit which opened the engine up and spotting a load of corrosion (I had one of the Socata improperly preserved and corroded engines – other threads 
) they prob99 closed it up again! A former employee more or less told me that was what they did in such cases, because Lycoming would not back them up on the ex Socata stock engines.
I simply would not use any European shop. If you need EASA-1 then probably Pen Yan in the US. But opinions differ; lots of previous threads where somebody had a crap job done by [a certain firm in the “middle of Europe” which went bust a while ago] and half a dozen pilots from that country saying that firm is absolutely fabulous
Sebastian_G wrote:
The issue is that many parts are so low quality that after running for 5 min they will no longer pass any visual inspection.
What exactly do you mean by not passing visual inspection yet going forever? If they just look ugly but measurements and NDT are fine, why replace them?
For mandatory replacement parts, it’s not the wear that precludes their reuse, it’s the very fact of installation – you have to replace them again even if you disassemble the engine at 0 seconds TSOH.
zuutroy wrote:
My IO-360 had £3500 worth of bits that were mandatory replacement when inspected last year. Labour for the job was £4000+VAT
That is pretty much the ballpark for the numbers I got yesterday from experience. approx 10-15k CHF for a sudden stoppage inspection.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
Silvaire wrote:The MT has the advantages of being inexpensive and more readily repaired if it happens again. It is actually relatively loud on takeoff due to a very fine low pitch stop setting, but regulation/compliance and reality may well be two different things.
Thanks for the feedback. It also has the advantage, or so I am told, that in a similar occurrence it breaks off more easily which in some cases made a sudden stoppage inspection unnecessary. I checked approvals in 2014 (or rather MT did for me) and they came back saying that their 3-blade prop only was installable on the E,F and J series (i.e. the 200 hp injected engine) but not on the O360-A1D that I have.My main goal if it can be achieved is to find a combination which allows noise certification to be reduced from currently “Swiss B” to “D”, which cancels out most noise taxes which have to be paid in some airfields. Some are relatively benign (ZRH CHF 8.-) but others brutal (Samedan 80.- CHF).
Right now we are not thinking of a total replacement of the engine, but in the case of cases that the engine were totally bust, it may well be an idea to look at the “E-STC” which allows the installation of a IO360 in the place of the O360. In which case, the prop obviously would be a strong contender.
I have heard that both engines and parts lead times are now getting quite long due to supply chain disruptions. If that is true, it might have an impact on your plan. I don’t know what working with MT is like from the US, but it seems that they have pretty much a monopoly situation for after-sales parts and maintenance in Europe and aren’t known for their speedy response times …. along the lines of 16 weeks. If you’re able to anticipate a bit on the insurance timeline and cost recovery, you might consider getting into line for delivery.
Understood, thank you @chflyer.
We will have a meeting tomorrrow which should shed some light on some of these things.
My IO360 had a prop strike 90 hours SMOH. Still, upon inspection, parts were identified as needing replacement. Some of those parts had mechanical damage from poor installation technique so took issue with the company doing the work as they were the ones who’d rebuilt it.
Anyway, 10k later………
