Pre-buy missed that one...

Fearless Tower

Fearless Tower

Touchdown! Greaser!
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Fearless Tower
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Client hired a local shop on the field to do a prebuy. They said it was all good, but this was the first thing that caught my eye on the walk around.

I can stick my fingernail in that crack....

Buyers beware. Be careful who you hire to do a prebuy.

609e57e0786b2a00d9d4db03d19d0ef6.heic
 
Fearless Tower said:
Client hired a local shop on the field to do a prebuy. They said it was all good, but this was the first thing that caught my eye on the walk around.

I can stick my fingernail in that crack....

Buyers beware. Be careful who you hire to do a prebuy.

609e57e0786b2a00d9d4db03d19d0ef6.heic
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pfft. The layers of corrosion will hold that together. Plus, it'll still fly if the tailwheel falls off.
 
That’s nothing a little WD-40 and duct tape couldn't fix.
 
Just a excuse to get a wide fork and baby bush wheel kit from ABW
 
Looks like it has been flying that way for many years.
 
Meh...get a wheel and buff all the corrosion away. The crack will go with it...
 
Fearless Tower said:
Client hired a local shop on the field to do a prebuy. They said it was all good, but this was the first thing that caught my eye on the walk around.

I can stick my fingernail in that crack....

Buyers beware. Be careful who you hire to do a prebuy.

609e57e0786b2a00d9d4db03d19d0ef6.heic
Click to expand...

Grrrr. Thanks for reminding me. Yeah, I was a naive first time buyer and got, uh, which one is the one with those spirally things on the outside...
 
and that surely happened between the last annual sign off.... :rolleyes:

I was talking to a co-worker about spar web inspections in his C33A, since he asked about the ERAU Arrow wing failure, and based on his statements on the reality of those inspections (specifically, the history of it and how its treated in the community at large) I came away from the conversation with the reinforced conviction that we all live in the grey. The PA-24 gear AD is another one that lives dead smack in the see no evil hear no evil realm in real world practice. Most of our cans are pencil whipped to some degree. It's almost like the inevitability of breaking traffic laws every day. It only becomes a source of banter when it comes to trading the airplane. Once in new hands, things revert back to the same economics. Otherwise, every airplane bought would be re-sold as a cherry, yet the market clearly debunks that flat on its face. We're either hypocrites, or liars, because honesty on this topic gets you flamed.

I don't find it irrational in the least to be frank; the cost of the avocation is slipping away from the general population to a greater degree. Not everything can be fixed by "partnership" ownership either, so that's another moralizing canard with little influence in the reality of the economic discussion.
 
Fearless Tower said:
Client hired a local shop on the field to do a prebuy. They said it was all good, but this was the first thing that caught my eye on the walk around.

I can stick my fingernail in that crack....

Buyers beware. Be careful who you hire to do a prebuy.
Click to expand...

Would love to see the specific work order. o_O

Just like during an annual, or buying tires for the car, or eating in a restaurant - you get what you pay for!

hindsight2020 said:
Most of our cans are pencil whipped to some degree.
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Yep, at the best of times. It is a vicious cycle - trying to meet the regs, while keeping the customer happy, while keeping the lawyers at bay. Some players are willing to take on more risk than others, which is where the $500 annual comes from. "It flew in, it'll fly out, here is your signature". Always fun for those that come afterwards.
 
hindsight2020 said:
I was talking to a co-worker about spar web inspections in his C33A, since he asked about the ERAU Arrow wing failure, and based on his statements on the reality of those inspections (specifically, the history of it and how its treated in the community at large) I came away from the conversation with the reinforced conviction that we all live in the grey. The PA-24 gear AD is another one that lives dead smack in the see no evil hear no evil realm in real world practice. Most of our cans are pencil whipped to some degree. It's almost like the inevitability of breaking traffic laws every day. It only becomes a source of banter when it comes to trading the airplane. Once in new hands, things revert back to the same economics. Otherwise, every airplane bought would be re-sold as a cherry, yet the market clearly debunks that flat on its face. We're either hypocrites, or liars, because honesty on this topic gets you flamed.
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And sadly, the Cardinal wing spar carry-through falls in the same category. The prevailing wisdom on CFO is that significant corrosion is so rare - unless the plane has been tied down outside near the ocean - that it is considered acceptable to not inspect it thoroughly, either at pre-buy or at annual. That practice nearly turned out to be a disaster for me when I bought my plane. I hired a mechanic, also a Cardinal owner, who offered his services off of the CFO mailing list. Though I intended to be there to supervise the pre-buy, that turned out to be impossible due to weather (early spring, low clouds and snow - I was going to fly a club plane there but was still VFR only, probably should have taken the aluminum tube but did not plan for that contingency far enough in advance). This guy only did a very cursory look with a flashlight through an inspection hole, and nothing was visible that way. But remove the headliner and you would have found a mouse nest with lots of pee and poop all over the spar carry-through. The resulting corrosion exceeded Cessna's spec limits and was not repairable. Since the plane was sold with a fresh annual, I didn't learn of this until the following year when my local mechanic did a very thorough first annual on the plane. I say "nearly" only because insurance paid for the repair, but the stress and hassle of hunting for a salvage part, finding a shop capable of doing the repair, working out the ferry permit details, must have taken a few years off of my life. Of course, by then the pre-buy mechanic had long since cashed my check. :(

And while I agree with the CFO "prevailing wisdom" regarding the rarity of corroded spar carry-throughs on Cardinals, the bottom line is that I had specifically instructed this mechanic that the issue was a major concern of mine and that he was to do a thorough inspection, and he didn't keep his word. But given that my insurance had paid for the lion's share of my expenses from the problem, it wouldn't have been worth it to take him to small claims court. Just an object lesson in what can happen if anything is pencil-whipped at pre-buy time, and an airplane shopper's "pre-buy missed that one" story...
 
azure said:
And while I agree with the CFO "prevailing wisdom" regarding the rarity of corroded spar carry-throughs on Cardinals, the bottom line is that I had specifically instructed this mechanic that the issue was a major concern of mine and that he was to do a thorough inspection, and he didn't keep his word.
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It's not rare. The very first Cardinal I inspected had a corroded spar carrythrough that required a lot of work to salvage. And it doesn't take seaside air or mouse nesting to corrode it. There are a couple of CAT hoses in the ceiling that duct fresh air from the inlets to the overhead vents; they are against the spar and they vibrate and wear through, and the steel wire comes into contact with the aluminum spar. The moisture comes fom the breath of the occupants; it gets into the ceiling and condenses on the cold aluminum in flight, and corrosion of various sorts sets in. The real dangers is that the aluminum can appear mostly OK but have great craters beneath the surface with only a pinhole at the surface to indicate a problem. It takes a thorough cleaning, an eddy-current test and ultrasonic thickness measuring to determine the true state of the thing. Cessna demands extensive data that they then analyze and approve or reject the spar. Long process. A simple prebuy on a Cardinal or 210 is insanely insufficient.
 
James331 said:
Just a excuse to get a wide fork and baby bush wheel kit from ABW
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And hassle with endless shimmy problems. Those are famous for it, and I have spent days trying to stop it on one airplane. Do a search on ABW tailwheel shimmy.
 
Dan Thomas said:
It's not rare. The very first Cardinal I inspected had a corroded spar carrythrough that required a lot of work to salvage. And it doesn't take seaside air or mouse nesting to corrode it. There are a couple of CAT hoses in the ceiling that duct fresh air from the inlets to the overhead vents; they are against the spar and they vibrate and wear through, and the steel wire comes into contact with the aluminum spar. The moisture comes fom the breath of the occupants; it gets into the ceiling and condenses on the cold aluminum in flight, and corrosion of various sorts sets in. The real dangers is that the aluminum can appear mostly OK but have great craters beneath the surface with only a pinhole at the surface to indicate a problem. It takes a thorough cleaning, an eddy-current test and ultrasonic thickness measuring to determine the true state of the thing. Cessna demands extensive data that they then analyze and approve or reject the spar. Long process. A simple prebuy on a Cardinal or 210 is insanely insufficient.
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I'm certainly not qualified to argue the point as I am not a mechanic - just going by the number of instances (very few) that I've seen reported on CFO over the years. But if what you say is true, then why is there not a SB or even an AD for periodic (say, every 10 years or so) de-installation of the carry-through and testing? Yes, it would be a HUGELY expensive job and an enormous hassle, but structural failure in flight is a real possibility with severe corrosion, and it sounds like some ongoing corrosion would be inevitable through routine use of the plane.

The salvage part that I used for my repair was tested thoroughly by a local lab before installation, I believe both using eddy currents and by thickness measuring (not sure of the method used for that though) and it passed.
 
azure said:
I'm certainly not qualified to argue the point as I am not a mechanic - just going by the number of instances (very few) that I've seen reported on CFO over the years. But if what you say is true, then why is there not a SB or even an AD for periodic (say, every 10 years or so) de-installation of the carry-through and testing?
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It will come sooner or later. Cessna already has documents on it, and sometimes those turn into ADs if the risk is deemed serious enough. Eventually an airplane or two will come apart in flight and then you'll see ADs. The whole fleet of lightplanes is aging and showing corrosion and cracks, and there will be more failures when they finally get old enough and the maintenance and inspections have been sketchy enough.
 
Dan Thomas said:
The real dangers is that the aluminum can appear mostly OK but have great craters beneath the surface with only a pinhole at the surface to indicate a problem.
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I've gotta say I've looked at a LOT of aluminum in 60 years of wrenching and I've never come across a chunk where great craters in the subsurface exist without some indication other than a pinhole on the surface. Tell me how that happens?

Jim
 
weirdjim said:
I've gotta say I've looked at a LOT of aluminum in 60 years of wrenching and I've never come across a chunk where great craters in the subsurface exist without some indication other than a pinhole on the surface. Tell me how that happens?

Jim
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Inter-grainual corrosion usually starts below the surface.
 
Mtns2Skies said:
what type of plane?
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What is your problem? You know that as a member of this forum you are expected to know what type of plane this belongs to and every other close up picture of some esoteric part belongs to. Now go up to your room and straighten yourself out and don't come down again until you have it figured out. ;)
 
I gotta say there is no excuse for missing this crack, but maybe it was ignored by the buyer.
these cracks in the old Scott casting is very common, they are cause by banging the tail down in a turn the wheel and tire cause a twisting moment on that casting and it simply wasn't made for that.
Unless you can find a used one, you are looking at near a grand for that piece
 
weirdjim said:
No problem with understanding that, but "great craters" without any exfoliation on the surface ... GREAT craters?

Jim
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I don't know how we got here, but that crack shown is not caused by corrosion.
 
Tom-D said:
I don't know how we got here, but that crack shown is not caused by corrosion.
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I think people are focusing on the rust on the leaf springs. While it looks ugly, that is more surface corrosion and not an immediate issue.

Like you say, the crack has nothing to do with corrosion. My guess is that at some point, someone put a bad side load on the tail wheel and the mount shifted on the leaf spring. You could visibly tell that the thing was mounted cockeyed with the main spring pressing against the side.
 
Tom-D said:
Unless you can find a used one, you are looking at near a grand for that piece
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They’re about $1200 new now from Spruce.

The A&P who was representing the seller was going to have it welded. I’ve talked to two different IA’s who said ain’t no way you can effectively weld that thing.
 
Don't talk to A&Ps about welding, talk to a GOOD welding shop.

I think I've relayed this here before...

The carb box on my 182 was badly cracked when I bought it in 2004. In 2 or 3 places. I don't recall how much a new one was...but a LOT.

So, I brought it up on a couple of pilots sites, one was CPA, I was active there back in those days. The "experts" went crazy "you can't weld that!!! It'll just crack again in the immediate future because you'll set up stress points. Etc. etc. etc. Yada. Yada. Yada."

I went to the local commercial welding shop. "Sure, we can weld that!"

"What about stresses?"

"We know how to relieve those." (It's been 14 years, I don't remember exactly what he said they do.)

"And you have someone who is good on aluminum?"

"Yep, He practices on beer cans!"

14 years and about 1600 hours later, it's still just fine. IIRC it cost me $50.
 
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