Have you ever caught a problem during preflight?

[KatieB]

This thread revival is great timing for Oshkosh. I have a buddy who discovered a bucket load of water in the tail of his RV-6A before departing OSH several years ago. It would have been a CG disaster if he hadn't found it. Of course, there is always rain, and usually a thunderstorm sometime during the show. And lots of curious, airplane-ignorant people around who might stick trash in inlets or inadvertently damage something. Lots of pilots are too eager to light the fires and beat the rush/storm/airshow out of there at a time when their preflight needs to be extra-thorough.

[snopercod]

Once I discovered a capacitor or something in the lower cowling of a rental C-172. That was the same FBO where I discovered a bird's nest between cylinders 2 and 4. Stuff like that is why I chose to build my own plane. Also, up in Alaska, I was pre-flighting a Piper Pacer on skis, and found a nut missing on the flap actuator arm. That could have been serious.

[EXflyer]

Some years back was working as a mechanic for a flying service. Being low man on the pole had to check and preflight rental AC each morning. We had an all Cessna fleet of 150 and 172s. One thing I always was told to check from the rear, look at the front spar area about half way in from there to the fuse. Sure enough there was some small ripples in the skin about two feet out from the root. Upon checking found the spar bent and a little almost unseen damage to the tip. Had run into a post while taxing the day before.
Was not the first or last spar repair we did either in two years I worked there. Boyd in Chiloquin OR

[sblack]

Originally Posted by krw5927

Oh, and note the lack of primer on a certified aircraft that's over 30 years old

I thought most of the old cessnas were not primed internally.

[xavierm]

Found in my stabilator last Saturday.

[dlloyd3]

Many. A several bird nests at FCI in the spring. Every spring it seemed birds would visit transient airplanes. Maybe one bird nest at home base. Several tools after mechanical work (Bonanza). A couple leaking fuel bladder (Bonanza). An intake clamp fallen off (Bonanza). Two flat struts (Bonanza). A couple alternators failed to produce on startup. One caused by the same mechanic that left tools. A couple vacuum pumps failed to suck worse on startup. An attitude indicator that failed on startup. That may sound like a lot but covers 40 years and 6000+ hours.

[cdeerinck]

Originally Posted by tejasflyer

I was the second flight of the day in a schweizer 233, a strut braced high wing glider, and as the instructor was talking with the first ride, I preflighted and found that the nut holding the outboard strut bolt was gone, and the bolt could be rotated by hand. After smirking over to the instructor to show him I'd found his "test" item, he went to double check that I was not lying. No one had noticed and the airplane was airborn for an hour or more.

KB

I'm pretty sure a 2-33 can fly without one of the wings.

[rstisser]

!. a hole in the rudder from the windstorm the night before.
2. A preflight after a fuel stop on the way back to Illinois from Florida revealed too much oil on the rudder. The nut had come loose on the oil pressure line coming from the engine to the sender. In 2.5 hrs I had lost 2 quarts of oil.

[JumpNurse]

So I recently purchased a cherokee 180 until I can get a RV flying. Plane was out of town, so hired a local A&P/IA to do the prebuy and renew the annual inspection since it was about 6 months out anyways. He says all the right things over the phone, seems very knowledgeable and thorough. Seems like a good guy for the job. He has the plane for a week or two before finishing up a couple of items he said needed to be addressed. Says plane is in excellent condition and signs everything off. Great.

Fly up commercially a couple of days later to pick up plane. Get to the plane. Notice immediately that one strut is a little low and main tires are a little low. Ok, It's in the desert. Might have been good during heat of day and lowered the pressure in the cooler morning. I'll give benefit of the doubt. Touch up tires. Pay him for his 'work' and he scatters toot sweet. Okey dokey, must have something important to get to.

Do a good preflight and nothing else seems too out of whack. Get in and find primer is non-functional. Okay, this is now irritating. Starts without primer, so decide to proceed to runup. Runup is good, do a little prolonged run up since I will be departing a suboptimal direction in a new airplane and everything stays in the green. Takeoff is uphill and pointed at a mountain so I'm watching every engine gauge like a hawk for first few seconds so I can abandon take off if things don't look right. Just note airspeed is alive during first few seconds. By the time I get back to airspeed, plane is happily climbing. Airspeed seems a little low, but not way out of tune.

Fast forward 3 hours of happy flying back home. As I start setting up for landing, I notice airspeed isn't coming down as expected. Attitude indicator is also super slow to respond. ****, new airplane landing at a new airport and I don't have a reliable airspeed indicator. So I fly it to the runway just to make sure I'm not on the evening news.

Land and notice plane settles very nose high. Park and secure. L main strut is flat and R isn't much better. Now, I'm really unhappy. Few days later, find a hangar and start taking care of squawks. Jack up plane and find wheel bearings so loud that it sounds like a concrete mixer. Strut seals completely gone. Take off the cowl, find a piece of scat tubing just loose on top of cylinders (I didn't pull cowl on pre flight, lesson learned). He didn't even bother to squirt grease in the links during this 'fine tooth comb annual/prebuy.' Pull inspection panels to start chasing the airspeed problem, and find corrosion he failed to note. The only thing I can tell he actually did was change the oil and air filter. Moral of the story, just because someone has credentials and says an airplane is flight-worthy doesn't mean they actually know what they are doing/do what they say they did. Always make sure you verify with your own eyes that everything is ready to go. It's your rear sitting in the beer can a few thousand feet above the ground.

Sincerely,
Owner of a pencil-whipped annual/pre-buy

[dlloyd3]

The real question is, what did you miss in your preflight that should have been caught?