What’s the worst or most questionable aircraft repair you’ve ever seen?

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Lazy_Tac@reddit

flight controls rigged backwards, vertical stab held on with the wrong and understrength bolts.

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Comprehensive_Wall47@reddit

I’ve seen a rudder rigged backwards a couple times pretty sketchy stuff

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Lazy_Tac@reddit

I also had a main landing gear get jammed in transit due to the multiple issues with the actuator for the door being installed wrong

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fgflyer@reddit

The most questionable/worst repairs are the ones that you won’t see talked about here.

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Sharp_Experience_104@reddit

Because the victims are no longer with us. /s

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setthrustpositive@reddit

There's a Piper Aerostar accident in the 70s/80s that the investigation said, "This aircraft is in such poor condition, we're amazed it made it to the accident."

There was a bad mechanic on my field that interpreted the Piper Battery cable AD in his own way. The cable he made used 12 gauge copper house wire that he twisted and placed inside a garden hose, then smashed 3/4 in copper house fittings on to make terminals.

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Mammoth_Beyond7107@reddit

I saw a guy at an FBO trying to please a customer by getting his brakes fixed on a Mooney to "save the family vacation." He went to NAPA to buy o-rings to rebuild the master cylinder. They were too big, he forced them in. Brake was dragging on take-off roll, fluid expanded, but the lock-o-seal could not release to bleed off pressure. Right brake locked airplane went off the runway, prop strike, and no vacation.

They didn't fire the guy. A week later, he blew up an aircraft battery when he connected the wrong charger...they didn't fire the guy. A few weeks later, he snapped the nose gear off the flight schools, only twin-engine aircraft. Then they fired him.

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BandicootOnly4598@reddit

The most questionable repairs were repairs not done. I was flying with a school that routinely had engine failures and other assorted mechanical issues. Often times, maintenance would do a run up on the ground, declare that they couldn’t replicate, and send it off to some other unsuspecting student, only to have it fail the exact same way, in flight, again.

Ok, there was also the time at a different school that a skyhawk tank started leaking so they tried to coat the inside with proseal, but used a marine knock off instead. The stuff was made for diesel, not gas, and it quickly broke down into half square inch flat flexible pieces, that so thoroughly clogged everything that the engine totally quit on one of the instructors, who ended up putting it down in a field. The kicker is that the tank was never actually leaking to begin with, there was just a stuck sump. This was the same mechanic that left a nylon pitot cover on while checking the pitot heat; that was really fun to get off.

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Maximum-Scar-3922@reddit

"Routine engine failures" is possibly the wildest three words I've ever read pertaining to aviation.

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Bergasms@reddit

Bet the students that survived that school were absolite guns at handling EFAT's

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CBRChimpy@reddit

A 172 had been taxied off a taxiway to avoid a kangaroo and hit a tree right in the middle of the wing.

The resulting hole in the leading edge had been patched but the massive dent was still there. Apparently it was all good to fly?

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Lord_Giles@reddit

Experimental guy... i found a crack in my crank case on a modified vw engine. The manufacturer suggested jbweld and to monitor it. I hired a welder to weld it hoping for another 100 hours before overhauling... the weld failed between 3 and 6 hours later so i just overhauled it and bought a new case....

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mkosmo@reddit

JBWeld may have survived longer than the weld, though. Adhesives can outperform bad welds.

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Lord_Giles@reddit

Perhaps... but the welder said he was good :) The area behind the weld contained a pressurised oil channel, so based on knowing little about adhesives, i assumed an ok or better weld would be superior.

The rebuild revieled many unknown (to me) issues (cooked valves, worn cylinders & rings, evidence of detonation/preignition) anyway, so it was for the best :) the previous owner made a comment about not caring sbout EGT's and running as lean as he could (the carb is also particularly bad at distributing fuel evenly) and there were slight vaperlock issues as the fuel lines were run close to the exhaust (i have also re-done the fuel lines and vaporlock isn't ever a problem now)

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mkosmo@reddit

LOP with a carburated engine? That's... one way to reduce your lifespan.

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40KaratOrSomething@reddit

Saw the muffler on a Cherokee 6 installed backwards. Passed several annuals. Not until it developed a crack requiring replacement was it noticed. I believe it was on there backwards for at least 6 years which is how long the current owner has had it.

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3Green1974@reddit

Speed tape to “repair” a cracked window on a Challenger 604. It was a temporary fix to let us get to a repair base (6-8 hours, something like that). Our mechanic walked us through the process, per the maintenance manual, and I took a picture in case no one believed me. Wish I could post it here.

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Ashamed-Charge5309@reddit

Fancy some light reading? Heh...

Have at it

Only familiar with mechanical work on cars and trucks, but so much nervous laughter and "Seriously?" reading about this... Think I'll stay on the ground rather then flying any of these after this

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xxSk8terBoi69xd@reddit

The mechanic put the fuel sump on backwards. I notice when I was unable the sump the fuel during preflight. Crazier still, that plane flew multiple times.

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ce402@reddit

I duct taped a 16” cut in the fabric of the wing of a super cub, and flew it for a weekend before putting an actual patch down and properly stitching it.

Someone watched me do it on the ramp and asked if I could do that. Looked at him and said “I am.”

Oh, the joys of banner towing in restricted category aircraft.

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That_Soup4445@reddit

Gonna build a plane out of duct tape now just for the horrified stares as I get closer and people realize it’s not polished aluminum but just 47 rolls of the silver fixall

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PiperFM@reddit

I know guys who have flown Pacers across the country with totally duct taped tails.

It can work for awhile if you’re careful.

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winwaed@reddit

One of the Schweizer 2-33s that I flew back in the day had quite a bit of duct tape on the fabric near the tail wheel. Not the most critical area but scruffy as heck. I checked the website of the club a few months back: It is still flying but with much needed new fabric!

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HU_HU_HUMPDAY@reddit

Threw the hook too hard? We had a guy need to duct tape the horizontal stab of a Pawnee doing that.

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SaratogaFlyer@reddit

if it’s good enough for Apollo 13… it’s good enough for a cub

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Turbo_SkyRaider@reddit

That's gonna be my default reply for sketchy stuff from now on.

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hondaridr58@reddit

😂

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TheKgbWillWaitForNo1@reddit

Poor recordkeeping in aircraft logbooks (ie: inspection WAS done but not logged). Thats actually quite common at some places.

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VanDenBroeck@reddit

You’re more likely to find the opposite, the inspection was logged but not done.

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TheKgbWillWaitForNo1@reddit

Well thats reassuring

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Cessnateur@reddit

Not a repair, but once, during a preflight, I discovered that the mechanic forgot to refill the oil during an oil change.

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ReadyplayerParzival1@reddit

“My general impression is that experimental guys tend to take care of their babies pretty well”, ha ha ha, oh you sweet summer child.

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Metharlin@reddit

I've got to agree with the sentiment here. Yes, 'most' experimental guys baby their plane, but so do 'most' Cessna owners. Its just a lot easier to hide the fact that you're not doing the scheduled maintenance as an experimental owner because you, as the builder can do (and sign off) all the maintenance.

Actually, it's probably worse in experimental aviation, because those same guys that are doing shit maintenance on their birds used the same level of craftsmanship when they built them.

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IA150TW@reddit

The Titanic was built by professionals.

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VanDenBroeck@reddit

Yep, and it couldn’t even get off the ground.

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SimilarTranslator264@reddit

I tend to agree. Certified shit is so way overpriced and is why repairs are not always done. In the interest of “safety” PMA parts are 300% higher than the same part without the stamp so repairs are skipped which is the opposite of the purpose.

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Jorfogit@reddit

I dunno, I’m part of a pretty decent sized Midwest RV community and we all baby the hell out of our planes. We tend to fly in each other’s aircraft a good bit though, so poor treatment is frowned upon.

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ReadyplayerParzival1@reddit

I made the comment mostly in jest. In the larger communities of homebuilts like rv’s and lancairs and what not the owners are generally meticulous with the card of their planes. I’ve just seen a lot of sketchy repairs on some of the fabric taildraggers, ie kitfoxes.

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Jorfogit@reddit

Definitely fair!

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minfremi@reddit

A single row of rivets was used in the repair instead of a double row.

Twelve years later, JL123 killed 500-ish people.

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TemporaryAmbassador1@reddit

There was a Tomahawk that sat on our ramp. Once or twice a year the owner would come out and fly, once in a thunderstorm. That man flew on faith alone.

Once during a preflight, the airplane that had just been brought in,a Hydraulic notification came up, one system had just run to zero. Called maintenance. They said, “we filled it, you’re good to go”. I asked but they never looked the cause of the leak even, just wanted us to go. HELL NO! I said if that’s your solution we’ll be taking a new plane.

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IA150TW@reddit

My $0.02 is that there are good mechanics and bad mechanics. In the USA Experimentals are certified and registered . . . but I get your drift. There are cheap owners and not-so-cheap owners. I don't think an overlay of those two Venn-diagrams shows those groups to be largely the same.

But, considering most GA technology is over 80 years old at this point, and most work on GA aircraft can be done by a high school graduate who took shop classes, the dollars not spent on complying with various regulations that only apply to Normal Category COULD be spent doing more actual maintenance.

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DonnerPartyPicnic@reddit

Bouncing before the boat, i showed up and got a Ladder caution after my first pass. The assumption is that it's either a proximity switch or the latch is busted, and the ladder is either down in front of my left intake just flapping in the wind or could be at any time. Luckily, an inspection told me it wasn't. So I pulled the left back and flew home to get it fixed. Maintenance was under there for about 5 minutes and then told me I was hood to go. So I went back out.

Out of the break, I got another one. So I called it good for the day and did the same thing. Shut down and went inside to Maintenance and asked what they did to fix it.

"Well, sir, your latch was loose, so we just speed taped it."

Im sorry what.

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I-r0ck@reddit

Stall strips held on with aluminum tape

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HardCorePawn@reddit

"Unable to replicate issue - A/C satis for flight" /s

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IdahoAirplanes@reddit

There’s a lot of stuff that should be done during annual inspections that aren’t. It all takes time and time is money and pilots want cheap. An A&P told me a long time ago “it’s only your life.” Alas a lot of bolts are torqued to “JTE”. Just Tight Enough.

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gromm93@reddit

time is money and pilots want cheap.

Because aviation is expensive, and there's no getting around that.

Well, technically there is, but failures in the air tend to sort that out.

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rFlyingTower@reddit

This is a copy of the original post body for posterity:

Low time PPL working on IR and getting to know other pilots through my local EAA chapter. Last week the chapter had a presentation on the importance of torque wrenches—saw a couple of pretty startling photos, including a stearman throwing a cylinder in flight.

My general impression is that experimental guys tend to take care of their babies pretty well, and most of the really sketchy stuff are unauthorized or undocumented work done by cheap old pilot bastards on barely flying registered planes. Curious to know any horror stories you’ve heard.

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