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recapen

Well Known Member
Washers, screws, nuts, and miscellaneous other items dropped behind the engine while performing maintenance...that don't fall all the way through and hit the floor to escape!

I have found them sitting on the fuel pump cooling shroud, magnetos, prop governor. I know there are a bunch of 'shelves' that exist as part of the accessory case since I have found stuff just sitting there. I can easily pluck them out with a magnetic pick-up tool once I find them....it's the finding part that is the most difficult.

I don't want to go fly with something missing and possibly floating around up there since the throttle, prop, mixture controls, oil cooler flap, and heater box controls are all there - just waiting to be jammed....

Name some locations that you have found the most difficult to know exist and/or access.
 
I have some of those same concerns about hardware that I might have dropped.

Get one of those extendable magnetic tipped pointer rods. I use mine all the time. I just stick it in some area and move it around. Yesterday I found a small drill bit that I had no idea was in the bottom of my aft fuselage.
 
Thanks,

I have one of the flexible ones that I use.

Real easy when I see it.

The flex one allows me to poke it in there and swing it around. Sometimes I get lucky but there are still some good hiding places that I am trying to identify
 
I dropped a washer once while adjusting the air gap in the Hall effect sensor on my CPi2 ignition. Looked everywhere, combed the floor, poked around everywhere with a flashlight, had a second pair of eyes come in and look as well. Nothing. Started up the engine and it ran terrible - far worse than before when it wasn't sensing the flywheel magnets every revolution.

Found the missing washer right away - stuck to the inside of the flywheel on one of the magnets!:eek:
 
Bill Boyd said:
I dropped a washer once while adjusting the air gap in the Hall effect sensor on my CPi2 ignition. Looked everywhere, combed the floor, poked around everywhere with a flashlight, had a second pair of eyes come in and look as well. Nothing. Started up the engine and it ran terrible - far worse than before when it wasn't sensing the flywheel magnets every revolution.

Found the missing washer right away - stuck to the inside of the flywheel on one of the magnets!:eek:
Click to expand...

That one is gonna be hard to top:eek:
 
I was replacing the plug wire baffle seal and managed to drop one half of the old seal between the rear baffle and cylinder. And not being bright enough to cover the opening, I dropped half of the new seal there too. That's going to require some disassembly to get to.


My other favorite is washers going between the firewall and engine mount. Very hard to see and magnets are ineffective due to the steel mount.
 
Between....that is an odd one.
I have a card retrieval tool from my old mainframe computer days that will slip between....

Thanks - I'll try that one too!
 
FOD

Same. I have several magnetic pick ups. I put a towell out if possible and one under the airplane. If FOD falls. I stop till it's found. Postings above explain why.
 
recapen said:
...Name some locations that you have found the most difficult to know exist and/or access.
Click to expand...

That's easy. I was initially unable to remove the #1 cylinder and finally figured out that a 1/2" long #6 stainless (non-magnetic, of course...) screw had fallen into the gap between the #1 and #3 cylinder fins sometime in the last 16 years.
I was able to pick it out eventually -- and then it jumped up and landed under the #3 intake shroud tube! Another 5 minutes later I got it out.
 
Not to worry!

I picked up a new C-172 from the Cessna factory in '79 and, during preflight, was able to extract a heaping handful of all sorts of hardware from the various nooks and crannies I could reach.

But was careful not to roll the airplane on the way back to California! :D
 
Found a bucking bar in the wing of 20 year old C-150. Appeared to have been there since it left the factory.
 
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