MamaPut,
You bring back memories, some very painful. GH was a friend, and the 76 was my baby, so that one was especially awful.
I think you correctly ask about something that this thread explores - how much can we get right at the start, and how much do we have to rely on customer support and engineering refinement to solve.
The "pipes" mentioned in this thread are specially shaped titanium lines that seem to have been chafed by wire bundles that are possibly different on every aircraft, the product of the different equipment packages that each customer insists on. Learning how the bundles must be strung, and how they move after several thousand hours (and perhaps also several maintenance cycles) is not entirely predictable at the factory, I think. I recall that there are about 20 miles of wire in every S92, so the task is not as trivial as some of the Cotton Mathers would have you believe, else the Airbus 380 would be blackening our skys already, instead of being 2 years late.
There seems to be a puritanical standard held here where absolute perfection is required. Not a bad standard, but one that is certainly not met by the Boeings and Airbusses that folks below mention as if they had no flaws on introduction. It is a facet of popular thought that what we don't know, we believe to be perfect. Not at all true, guys. The Boeing service bulletin stack for a 777 looks a lot like one for an S76 or a S92, but perhaps 20 times thicker (warranted by its greater number of parts).
A few chaffing lines will be replaced, the bundles moved an inch or so and those two aircraft will fly on. Perhaps they are already back in service.
Regarding how fit those aircraft are in their first year, the customer bought about 6 more after several months of using them, and the 2000 hours per annum they are averaging is better than any other helo of any type that I know of this last year, including tried and true models from the puritan's favorite manufacturers. Something's going right.