I wish it was more charitable but the truth is it is cheaper to move me even at shop rate than move the helicotper.

Remove and replace due to defect is one thing for instruments. Quite another for engine installations.

Currently there is a Comanche on the field with Lycoming factory O-540 engine. Making obvious main bearing metal 90 hours in. Lycoming wants the owner to fly it another 25 hours!

Last factory O-360 engine I had the cylinders need to be scrapped if removed for any reason but can run to TBO? Plus the rod bearing issues.

You go over the merits of factory vs field overhauls and convince the customer this will be the right way to go mainly due to parts availability and downtime. Then the factory can't build an engine that has any quality.

AvStar new Carburetor running too lean vs Marvel overhaul. Cooking new cylinders in factory new Lycoming O-360 for Air Plains 172 conversion. But you don't find this out until later and warranty has passed. Engine monitor or fuel flow gauge would have caught it but the airplane did not have one or require one.

Kelly mags vs overhauling in the field or small no name shop. Big shop should have it figured out.

Brand New UMA airspeed indicator sticks off of the peg until rotation then pops up. but also I received an Overhauled airspeed has too much damping and is slow to react to airspeed changes. Weird silk screening from the O/H shop with the wrong fonts and transparent range marks. No way to win.

Bought a new C&D heater and thermostat control was failed out of the box. Nobody knew anything at Hartzell since they bought the heater company.

Any fuel injected Continental is too lean out of the box. Why they can't set them rich is beyond me. Why even bother with a calibrated bench check. I can easily turn it down later or manage it with the mixture control on the first flight. It takes way too much fiddling and ground running before the first flight for new cylinders. Seems to be all Continental injection overhaul shops have this issue.

It's not an old airplane issue. It's a lack of quality control. Either new parts or workmanship. If it is broken out of the box how did they pass any checks before leaving the accessory shop.

It ties up a lot of time to get right. FAA is not going to help but they are all certified shops with all the safeguards and checks that are supposed to go along with that.

If you call to complain at the shops the response now is. "Oh we don't make a lot on those anyway we just won't overhaul them anymore". "Or yeah I'm real old I'll just stop selling the STC".

I bought a Steves Gascolator for a Cessna 150 a few months ago. Even though STC approved I found you need a stainless bracket to hold it. Of course when the bracket was delivered there is no way it will fit. So I called and Steve said "Oh Cessna didn't have much quality control so you need to make a plate to adapt it to the mount". BS. I can't change a STC kit to add a plate to bolt to a mount that is already dangling from the firewall. Especially for a part that critical.
The Cessna gascolators all interchange just fine. The mounts are consistently in the right spot on the firewall. He just made the mount for a Cessna 170 buddy and then added it to the STC which covered all models but really does not fit any.

So he said "Oh it's just made for Cubs anyway". Well now I have a $400 paperweight until a Cub comes in that needs a gascolator.

I found a used Cessna one on Ebay and it got back together. But new vs old used is not a good indicator sadly. It all eats up time.......

We went through three attitude indicators on one client’s airplane, the first one showed up, the silk screen print on the card was fuzzy, we installed it anyway, and it’s 2° off in roll. But the auto pilot rocks back-and-forth because it’s trying to level the AI, but then it wants to turn. So we sent that back. The second one came and I have the video of the FedEx driver literally drop kicking the thing to the front porch, and the corner of the box is ripped open. So we sent that one back, and then the third one came and the guy drops it onto the front porch and the corner of the box is crushed, but I just said F it anyway and installed it and hope for the best, and that one worked out OK. But this was a huge hassle and the $120 I made up for markup didn’t cover the cost of installing two of these things, the six phone calls, and the trip from New York City and back the second time for my client to have the thing install installed and then me needing to go fly with him to verify it was good before he went home.
We are this going on next week actually, we sent the clients engine to an engine shop to have the crank checked out and the cam and lifters replaced and freshened up. One lifter literally polished the aft, cam lobe nearly round. The cylinders were pretty tired as well so we had probably one of the best cylinder guys in this part of the country go all through those, new exhaust valves, new valve guides perfectly honed cylinder walls, ring gaps set. This guy does it really good. But somehow the engine shop bolted those cylinders onto this engine and in 50 hours it’s using a quart every four. The bore scope looks like somebody ran a bottle brush hone in the cylinder and dwelled at top and bottom because it’s a bunch of parallel scratches. The engine shop doesn’t wanna own it because they said they just bolted of the cylinders on and it was somebody else’s work, The cylinder shop doesn’t wanna own it because they said it left there in great shape, I don’t wanna own it because it’s going to be another 6000 bucks to get these things off freshened up and back on. In this case, I had him pay the engine shop directly, and he paid me for the cylinders from the shop with the markup because it was already $30,000 over budget and I was just trying to get him out the door. So I think we’re gonna make him a break on the cylinder R&R labor, and the cylinder shop is gonna end up, redoing the stuff it cost because they’re good guys, I think the cylinders were ruined by the engine shop because he had some Harley Davidson guy putting them together. All of the oil drain back tube fittings in the head had four dots of pipe dope on them and they all leaked, the cylinder injector lines were so massively over torqued, one of them was stripped out on delivery, another one broke in cruise and he landed at a Marine Corps air station, and had guns pointed at him. And a whole bunch of other amateur mistakes that a good shop wouldn’t make. We’re not using them ever again, But at least the markup goes to soften the blow whenever %#$@ blows up because we do stand behind our work and we even stand behind work that we have vendors due on our behalf. I took an entire day to go to the MCAS Quantico and get this guy‘s plane fixed and out the door. I think all he cares about is how much he paid and what the finished product was and so far it’s been a lot of money and an unreliable airplane and although some airplanes are more trouble than others, it’s been way too much for him.

Every time I come home mad about some vendor disaster my wife says:

"Well there is another row we can't go down at Oshkosh".

Meaning inside the exhibit buildings or outdoor vendor displays.

After reading this thread I have a better understanding of why my buddy’s GrummanTraveller,s annual with nothing obviously wrong and in generally great condition ended up costing him $3500.
Most of the hobbyist pilots I know can’t stand much of that!
I think he will be doing the vast majority of his own maintenance from here on out, legal or not!

And when he sells it, he'll be the first one to tell you it was maintained with an "open checkbook" and can't figure out whey a potential buyer's mechanic found $10k in squawks on a Traveller.

Unfortunately, there's an inherent cost to work on an airplane, he could save an amount ironically similar to what his shops pays for insurance, but as they say you can deter or transfer liability, but you cannot avoid it.

If he works on it himself, he is just transferring that liability from the shop to himself personally.

Imagine the position these shops are in, working for $700 - $1000 of profit on a $3500 job, and then potentially getting sued for $50k if the airplane crashes.

My issue really isn't with how much shops charge, it is with how they charge.

I once reviewed a quote with 9 items in a row quoted as "FLAT RATE $500"

I told them they might as well replace "FLAT" with another four letter f word.

A bunch of places have moved to that model and the flat rate is how you pay $1600 to replace a capacitor with an hour of troubleshooting time on an auto pilot servo, or $2600 to have a Precise flight speed brake motor replaced and calibrated. Or in my case, how are you pay $6000 for a capacitor replacement on the power board of a WX 500 storm scope processor.

The answer to the liability issue is in “Loser pays”all costs associated with the suit for both parties. It will never happen because most legislators are attorneys themselves or are lobbied by attorneys!

And that is why I hated doing retail maintenance. Your buddy falls out of the sky onto the ramp at work because his x, y or z quit and he figures he won’t make it back home to do his own repair. I open the cowling and find the problem for x, y or z. I also, just by having my eyes open, see half a dozen things I would never allow to leave the shop after an annual. I fix his “one” problem and he flies away, grousing the entire time about how he got screwed on maintenance because he was a captive audience and had no choice. Two weeks later he can’t make it to an airport and ends up in a field, or worse. Where do you figure the FAA’s first stop will be after they find the logbook sticker I give him blowing around the wreckage? Yeah, no thanks. I’m out.

And that is why I hated doing retail maintenance. Your buddy falls out of the sky onto the ramp at work because his x, y or z quit and he figures he won’t make it back home to do his own repair. I open the cowling and find the problem for x, y or z. I also, just by having my eyes open, see half a dozen things I would never allow to leave the shop after an annual. I fix his “one” problem and he flies away, grousing the entire time about how he got screwed on maintenance because he was a captive audience and had no choice. Two weeks later he can’t make it to an airport and ends up in a field, or worse. Where do you figure the FAA’s first stop will be after they find the logbook sticker I give him blowing around the wreckage? Yeah, no thanks. I’m out.

All of our logbook statements say that we certify the repair was done according to accepted practices with respect to the work performed. So I don’t see much liability for stuff that was there before and that we didn’t do, and we haven’t had anybody crash or get sued yet, but it still is concerning.

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Lol! That’s funny..

Byron reading over your engine saga that is tough being in the middle. The shop wasn't Airworx in Alabama was it?

Chuck $3500 is not the inspection cost. The annual inspection cost should be much less. It's what else is broken that adds up fast. Owners really need to realize the difference.

ANY simple part blows the budget now. I just paid $1000 for a used Cessna 150L carb heat airbox. $350 for a dimmer rheostat. $800 for yoke shafts EACH. (the black anodized shafts wear out from the yoke moving with the control lock on parked in the tie down) plus $45 EACH for the yoke rivets. The airplane still needs noswheel steering rods. Old owner flies it 40-50 hrs a year. He flies the most of anyone local I think. But it was worn out when he bought it. Still trying to catch up 10 years later. Things go bad during the year like the gascolator mentioned before. It's just getting old.

What that does not show is I tried to get a $350 heat box to help the owner. It was no good. I bought the bearing and shaft repair kit to try to save it but once opened up there were more issues with parts that were previously repaired. So I finally gave up and bought another to try.
Days and hours... Tried to help but it backfired.

Rule of thumb $3500 -$5000 is about the threshold a 4 cylinder fixed gear single owner can stand. It varies between a Cessna 150 owner or maybe a 172. Beyond that there is a real risk you won't get paid at all or it will take a very long time.

It doesn't matter what is wrong. You try to stay under that limit and get the major safety of flight items. But lately we have been hitting that every single year on even Cessna 150s.

The hardest are the old owners of late 70s 172N that bought them off Vanbortel with very low time back in the 80s and sat on them. Original paint always hangared but they need EVERYTHING due to corrosion, pencil whipped inspections for years by their IA airline pilot buddy, radios are shot ARC units. Corrosion on the belly. Corrosion inside but they look nice from 20 ft away. Some with original H engines no T mod. They cannot understand how the airplane needs a lot of work.

The owner sees those airplanes sky high in value so they won't sell but they also won't fix anything and you have to argue just to get all the inspection panels off to look. And they follow behind putting panels on with the wrong screws unless you give them some distraction like go get coffee. Preferably from the gas station 20 miles away. Then I fly with him maybe an hour and it sits until next annual in the T hangar. I charge the battery and keep the tires pumped up during the year.

I know of another Grumman I gave a estimate to where the wings needed to be pulled to remove the tanks and reseal. That was 15 years ago. Last annual it had. Still flying. He pulled his own wings and resealed.