Pre-Flight close call

[Weefle]

Since I’m in the process of building the 10, I have been renting 172’s from the local flying club. I hate rentals! Yesterday confirmed it.
I wanted to take my wife to Nelson BC for the day as it was our anniversary. I went to the airport ahead of time to preflight the 172 and make sure it was ready to go. Usually there is always some snag or another to delay departure.

I checked the left fuel level and only 10 gallons. Checked the right tank and it had 11. However upon closer inspection I noticed some clear blobs of stuff hanging from underside the fill port around its circumference. I reached in with my fingers and easily dislodged a glob of silicone! I immediately got the AME who maintains these airplanes and asked him to check it out. He removed several more globs. I asked him since when do you use silicone to seal a fuel neck filler and not proseal or something rated for fuel. He said the silicone was rated. I find that hard to believe .
long story short the airplane was grounded and so were our travel plans.

I also told the owner of the flight school he better check into maintenance standards before theres a serious incident. I was so flabbergasted I neglected to take pictures.

I don’t know if this stuff would have floated on the fuel or sunk to the bottom and got sucked in the fuel system but I didn’t want to find out. I fly out of CYVK and we are surrounded by mountains and few places for good off airport landings.

Bottom line is guys if you are renting or even borrowing an airplane do as thorough an inspection as you can, who knows what you will find!

I’m within a month or so of first flight so needless to say I’m done renting.

Keith

 

[Stevea]

Haven't experienced that kind of problem while is was a renter pilot. But, now as a builder/owner I know my tolerance for "hmmm....that's not good" is now much lower.

I did find something once while pre-flighting a Piper Archer. At that time I was an RV builder very experienced with riveting....so I knew what good, bad and ugly rivets looked like. While pre-flighting the Piper I noticed the hinges on the elevator anti-servo tab had been replaced. "Cool, somebody did some riveting!" I thought. A quick look at the shop heads on the universal rivets holding the hinges to the tab and the elevator showed about three quarters of them to be in the "bad to ugly" category....bent over or over driven seemed to be the repair standard. I would have replaced all the bad/ugly ones. I did end up flying the airplane that day.......might be a different decision today.

 

[PhatRV]

I found loose bolts that hold part of the door on the Cherokee and there was write up to the door couldn't be closed properly. I also found visible cracks on the flap, cowl cover with botched up rivet job and rivet heads ground down from the vibration, etc. The scary thing is I found them out because I was building the RV. All of the student pilots and renters were oblivious to all of these defects.