RickWoodall
Well Known Member
We had put aside two days to do some misc extras, and a very thorough check over on my new plane. This has only been flying for 3 months, flown over 55 hours and been inspected by all sorts of builders, the inspector and I paid a fully licesnsed AME all in the last few months to go over everything.
During our cowl off inspection, I found one fuel line that with a bit of slack, seems to have settled a bit over to one side. No big deal, its adel clamped the engine mount has hose clamped on for vibration protection. Looked good. It is a top of the line interenal fire sleeved aviation fuel hose. To be extra safe and prevent vapour lock, I had added another fire sleeve to it. The little issue that arose, was with a little settling out of things in the first 50 hours..and this being hard to see, I NEVER SAW nor did any other eyes...an issue developing. A little tiny gear clamp that is used for the exhaust hangars has been rubbing on the fuel line now that it softened and had sagged a bit. Enough rubbing there was a hole right through the second, orange fire sleeve. WOW. I took all apart to see if there was any damage to the fuel line and am good. The moral of the story...even trained eyes miss things..stuff moves and shakes, and the extra piece of fire sleeve may have given me the time to notice and fix this well before a failure. Just a heads up to all as we rush to make OSH...give it a great SLOW and thorough check over. I have looked at this hundreds of times and not noticed the potential failure. All fixed, gear clamp turned and protected so no sharp corners, and fuel line all resecured. Just a heads up to others. See you at OSH.
During our cowl off inspection, I found one fuel line that with a bit of slack, seems to have settled a bit over to one side. No big deal, its adel clamped the engine mount has hose clamped on for vibration protection. Looked good. It is a top of the line interenal fire sleeved aviation fuel hose. To be extra safe and prevent vapour lock, I had added another fire sleeve to it. The little issue that arose, was with a little settling out of things in the first 50 hours..and this being hard to see, I NEVER SAW nor did any other eyes...an issue developing. A little tiny gear clamp that is used for the exhaust hangars has been rubbing on the fuel line now that it softened and had sagged a bit. Enough rubbing there was a hole right through the second, orange fire sleeve. WOW. I took all apart to see if there was any damage to the fuel line and am good. The moral of the story...even trained eyes miss things..stuff moves and shakes, and the extra piece of fire sleeve may have given me the time to notice and fix this well before a failure. Just a heads up to all as we rush to make OSH...give it a great SLOW and thorough check over. I have looked at this hundreds of times and not noticed the potential failure. All fixed, gear clamp turned and protected so no sharp corners, and fuel line all resecured. Just a heads up to others. See you at OSH.
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