Grob Tutor Lycoming Engine

[abortt]

A recent article in Flight International mentioned that Lycoming have issued a sevice bulletin requiring the Lycoming AEIO 360 engines (amongst others) to have the crankshaft replaced within 50 hours. Does this effect the UAS's ?

[Duncan D'Sorderlee]

The UAS/AEF Tutors are serviced every 50hrs. Any requirement to change the crankshaft would, presumably, take place then.

[A and C]

It would be imposable to tell if the UAS aircraft are subject to the crankshaft AD with out checking the S/N's of the engine in question.

Changing a Crankshaft is not a job that is normaly within the bounds of a 50 hour check and it would normaly take about 8-10 man hours to remove the engine and 10-12 to refit it once it had come back from the engine shop.

At a guess I would say that it is about 16- 18 man hours work in the engine shop.

Of course the time to remove and re-fit the engine will drop dramaticly if the guys in the hangar have to do the whole fleet !.

[Flik Roll]

IIRC correctly it is checked since the accident last summer. They all underwent a changepost accident.

[Skylark4]

The guys in the hangar are already fully skilled in replacing engines. Remember that there is no fat on the bone though and engine changes are done almost on a spare time basis when manpower can be spared from other work. I am rather out of the loop now but I think it tends to take about a week.

Mike W

[A and C]

I was not sugesting that guys in the hangar are not fully skilled but with practice the time that it takes to do such a job will drop dramaticly.

I just hope that they don't have to get the practice even if it is at Lycoming's expence because of the large amount of disruption to the UAS program that this would have.

[Skylark4]

A&C
Eggsactly!

The Guys already have that experience. Those engines only do 1600 hours before change and you have been using them quite a lot.

Mike W

[helicopter-redeye]

There is an SL out on many hundreds of Lycoming engines. Check the SL details on the L website to see if affected. Replacement is 'free' but there is going to be one hellvaqueue when the rush starts in the Fall (I'm having mine done next week and I'm first in the queue ....)