How's your maintenance going?

[Barneyw]

Hi All

Some of you might remember my first post which highlighted the huge leak I had emanating from the left brake master cylinder plus the discussion about hydraulic fluid. I am happy to report here that I have now changed the fluid to Royco 782 and all feels well..., however, I do have a couple of other things to report now having completed my first annual and a proper shakedown of the aircraft where I am attempting to bringing things up to spec and within the limits dependent on the support available eg spares etc.

Item 1. Engine strainer - you know the one that is located at the rear of the engine buried under all that superfluous stuff hanging off the accessory drive and hard top get to. Well it looked liked it hadn't been touched over the years so we pulled the strainer and surprise surprise surprise we found half a split pin wedged half way along it. After putting our collective thinking caps on we worked out that the most likely source of a split pin was one of the magnetos and given there was a STC'd SureFly magneto recently fitted we started with that one and lucked in. See the attached photos. This split is quite difficult to get in and apparently some find it convenient to install a non-standard thinner split pin in to secure the nut. Well I'm here to report that that does not work. We used a slick split pin to secure the nut which is designed to fit and slip in easily. I feel I have been very fortunate on this item alone.

Item 2. Alternator STC - The head of the bolt supporting the alternator was found to be rubbing and providing some lateral tension on the belt. The bolt and washer were mounted in such a way the baffle sat under the washer making the bolt head protrude out enough to interfere with the alternator belt. The fix was easy enough - enlarge the hole so the washer and the head tightened up directly on the alternator mount.

Item 3. Maintenance Practices - We found a number of ineffective lockwires including one lockwire that was backwards.

Anyway i thought I would share this warts and all with one thing in mind that someone somewhere will benefit and if it's happening here it's more than likely happening globally.

I look forward to the comments.

 

Cheers

BW

 

[jamesm]

I don't recall that Magneto Gear being recessed but I haven't had to remove the SureFly SIM, so my memory might be a little sketchy.  Once we got the Magneto gear  installed correctly, timing was easy. I had bought separate Magneto gear My thought was if the SureFly thing didn't live up to the expectation I could slip back in the original Bendix magneto. The Surefly has been running no problems since ~2019. Same with the Plane Power Alternator installed  in 2007 before that there was STC kit available. I used the Mooney Alternator conversion Drawing and substituted Plane power for the Prestolite ALYxxx  Alternator and Zeftronics Voltage regulator had to get a slightly different belt because the popular size was belt was too long. Absolutely no trouble except maybe snugged the belt once in ~ 17 years.  The same with the Skytec starter the housing was found loose during annual several  years back but I has been in stalled since 2004.  So in my opinion for what it's worth, Jason and team at SureFly, SkyTec, PlanePower has done me right.

James '67C

[M20F]

5 hours ago, Barneyw said:

Anyway i thought I would share this warts and all with one thing in mind that someone somewhere will benefit and if it's happening here it's more than likely happening globally.

 

Of course it is.  I use Maxwell every couple of years and use my local guy which we have for decades.  They both like to point out how the other guy missed something, they both are right.  I win because of their efforts.  They both are very good.  
 
New eyes will always find something that old eyes didn’t.  Generally the longer you care for a plane the less you find, every so often though a WTF still pops up.