I was thinking the same thing.
Just like a borescope is one of many tools, individual A&Ps including Mike Busch are just one of many tools and resources available to owners.
I do not agree with everything Tom D says, just like I don't agree with every single thing Ron Levy puts out when it comes to interpreting FARs (not singling anyone out, just using a couple of prolific examples), but since I have been on this board I have learned alot from both of them along with countless others here....just like I have learned from Mike Busch.
As an owner, you need to take it all in....learn as much as you can about your airplane and make educated decisions. Don't just automatically and categorically discount what someone is telling you because it isn't what you want to hear.
If you ignore the motivations of or the sources of information in your equation then you will be listening to a lot of garbage a fair amount of the time as well. In the Military you get in the habit of listening to the Authority and Command. In the real world it is often quite different from that and you have to first judge the source of the information. All information that you get is not equally balanced.
For example if ten salesman tell you their product is great and 3 customers tell you the product is bad who do you believe? The salesman have a motivation in that they benefit if you believe them. The 3 customers who have already been burned by those salesman have much less to gain by giving you their experiences. The ten salesman are not bad people they might even believe what they say because they are biased and used to making those claims.
Just like news....if your news comes from fox well.....or msnbc.... lets just say it is not fair and balanced.
I'd recommend you research "condition based maintenance in aviation," as well as "infant mortality" and "mechanic induced maintenance/failure."
Condition based maintenance came about when American Airlines (I think it was) had trouble keeping up with their time based maintenance on a fleet of commercial airlines and still had large down time issues.
Infant mortality came into being as they noticed that sometimes when they would replace a perfectly working part with a new one the new one fail immediately after installation and it was obvious that the old part would have run much longer had they left it alone.
Mechanic induced maintenance is another term that came about as even when there wasn't infant mortality of the new part just having the imperfect action of a human messing with something to change, modify, upgrade it introduced a some not so small % of additional failures.
AA began/started/invented condition based maintenance with Drastic reductions in overall down time and maintenance costs. The program was so successful that NASA went to the company and asked for them to consult them start the program at NASA.
This ties into the TBO of engines in that you can run an engine long past TBO for several reasons.... If it ain't broke don't fix it.
In addition to the preflight walk around engine check of no oil leakage, no significant oil usage you have the 100 hr or annual of check the screen for metal and check the filter for metal and oil analysis to determine the particles of metal in the engine oil as a guide of approximate wear. Then you have the boroscope as another prescriptive device to see scoring or burnt issues.
It is not uncommon for the aviation mechanic cabal to attempt to chip away at the condition based maintenance philosophy by critizing condition based maintenance against the proven statistical evidence. You will see them attack boroscoping as in this thread, the old and faithful "well that doesn't tell you nothin bout the bottom" "put new cylinders on a weak bottom puts you in worse shape" or any number of other self serving attacks on weaknesses of oil analysis or waiting till you see metal in the filter or screens......blah, blah, blah......
Obviously I am responding to several threads in this post but then again you referred to several threads I posted in.
Most of my posts are for newbe owners/pilots more than for seasoned guys who figured all this out. Sometimes I might express myself a bit hard in that there is a great deal of noise around this issue and I want to new guys to hear it. When you are new to aviation and ownership you might well be a little romanced by the mechanic cabal.
I realize there are people you can never reach, so let them fall into the clutches of the cabal. But I keep trying to help the new owners. For those of you that find this irritating this is a good time to put me on your ignore list.
And for those who post or repost the propaganda of the cabal, don't be surprised when I slam it and slam it hard.
