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There are many S-58 Ts flying in the USA in fact there is a company in California that is licensed by Sikorsky to convert S-58s and H-34s to the S-58 T configuration and to act as a support center for that model. There is however one S-58 T that I hope is not flying and I hope it never got certified and therein lies a tale. When I was working in Los Angeles I heard that there was a company that was converting an H-34 to the S-58 T configuration. I went to see them and offered my services as I had been a tech rep on the S-58, H-34 and HSS-1. I discovered that the aircraft was purchased from the Israeli military and just about every moving part on it had been infested with sand to include the rotorhead and the swashplate as well as every lubricated surface in the airframe. I disconnected the upper swashplate from the pitch links and the pitch links from the pitch horns. I rotated the four blade cuffs and each one was severely effected by sand ingestion and as a result were extremely rough in their movement. We tried to purge the grease on one cuff but it didn’t do any good as the bearings were already effected. I rotated the upper portion of the swashplate and found the same problem and as before the purging had no effect. I told them it would be best to send the entire dynamic system and the power train back to Sikorsky for overhaul and they indicated that they did not want to incur the expense. I also discovered that they were trying to convert the airframe directly from an H-34 to an S-58 T. The certification procedure dictated that the airframe had to be certificated as an S-58 and after that was granted it could be converted to an S-58 T. They had already modified the airframe to accept the combining gearbox and were ready to install that and the engines within a week or so.
I told them that if they didn’t do it correctly I would not be involved in the program. While I was in the hangar I spoke to several company pilots who told me another story about how this company operates. They had recovered two S-55 wrecks and attached the good parts together to make one aircraft. They did not use factory jigs to maintain alignment and as a result the helicopter never flew right. After the first test flight they shipped the S-55 to Central America without getting US certification and they planned to do the same with the S-58 T.
I told this story on Just Helicopters and someone posted that the S-58 was rotting next to a company hangar in Alaska