Continental A65 Freshly Overhauled

[Hank Jarrett]

One reason I want to be present when something like this is done. I am there for an owner assist on ALL maintenance on my plane. I may not be an A&P or IA but if I am flying in the plane I want to be comfortable with the work done (glad my IA is good with that and he knows he can tell me to shut up at any time without hard feelings). I have been lucky so far and every A&P/IA I have worked with has been outstanding. Only problem I had was when the IA I rebuilt my engine under passed away before signing the paperwork. He was a good man and is missed. Can't exactly blame him. We will handle the paper problem, probably by tearing the engine down again and putting all new seals in. It shouldn't need any actual new parts or re-work (and I would enjoy building another engine with my IA!)

Hank

[3Dreaming]

One reason I want to be present when something like this is done. I am there for an owner assist on ALL maintenance on my plane. I may not be an A&P or IA but if I am flying in the plane I want to be comfortable with the work done (glad my IA is good with that and he knows he can tell me to shut up at any time without hard feelings). I have been lucky so far and every A&P/IA I have worked with has been outstanding. Only problem I had was when the IA I rebuilt my engine under passed away before signing the paperwork. He was a good man and is missed. Can't exactly blame him. We will handle the paper problem, probably by tearing the engine down again and putting all new seals in. It shouldn't need any actual new parts or re-work (and I would enjoy building another engine with my IA!)

Hank

I know it is probably semantics and maybe I'm just in a foul mood this afternoon, but a couple things here need corrected.

Your engine was not rebuilt, it was overhauled. Only the manufacture may rebuild, if they hold the type or production certificate.

Second, IA privileges are limited to inspecting and approving for return to service after major repairs or alterations, and performing annual inspections and supervising progressive inspections. They do not perform or supervise maintenance as an IA. That falls under the A&P privileges.

[Hank Jarrett]

Agree. Wrong choice of words. Every IA I have had was also an A&P so that one seems to slip by fairly often. The "rebuild" was in fact was an Overhaul....except of course for that one just before I got it. That was a paint job. ;-)

Hank

[Scott]

The FAA and certainly Transport Canada, and I suspect CAAs in most parts of the world have neither the resources or expertise to directly oversee engine overhauls or any other work performed on aircraft. Their resources are usually concentrated on higher level regulatory oversight ie ensuring people, organizations have proper training and procedures, and are meeting the obligations of their approvals.

my personal procedure for any engine that has been the subject of significant work is to do three ground runs of 15-20 minutes, allowing the engine to cool, make adjustments, address any issues in between. Each run includes a brief time at full throttle.

Then I dump the oil and check the screen(s)/filter. If all is well a 30-45 minute flight, orbiting the field is next, followed by another screen/filter inspection.

The oil gets dumped and filters checked at about 5 hours and again at 15-20 hours. If something is really a miss it will have revealed itself by this point.

Do the subsequent 25 or 50hr intervals. After about 200 hours, we can begin to relax a bit more! This is the unfortunate reality of low time engines in general aviation.

We're in a buyer beware industry. Putting aside who's to blame for a moment, think about what needs to happen to reduce risk. There may be some things you're willing to accept in a pre-purchase inspection, but don't let your desire to own the aircraft/engine compromise good risk-based decision-making.

Hanlin's law states "never assume malice is behind that which can be explained by incompetence."

For certified aircraft, there's really only one way to do things right ie meet minimum standards, but a virtually unlimited number of ways to mess up. An overhaul is one maintenance event that must be properly documented. As I said before, that record plus fairly basic visual verifications will reveal whether or not you're dealing with a legitimate engine.

Don't rely on government to protect you, it's too busy protecting itself!
S