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Caught myself using the wrong torque value on landing gear bolts for 3 years
I was working on a Piper Archer last Tuesday at our hangar in Bakersfield and something just felt off when I was torquing down the main gear bolts. Decided to double check the manual for the third time in my life and realized I had been using the value for the nose gear this whole time. Tipped me off because the bolt was feeling too tight before it hit the click on my wrench. Has anyone else found a mistake they made forever just because nobody questioned it?
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shanem3725d ago
Wouldn't it be wild if half the planes out there are held together by wrong torque values and we just never know? The fact that nobody's seen any issues makes me wonder how much room for error these bolts actually have. Maybe the engineers built in a crazy safety margin (you know, just in case) that's saving us all from our own mistakes.
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faith_carter25d ago
Bakersfield huh. My buddy at the field out in Fresno has been doing the same thing with the nose strut fill valve caps on Cessnas for like four years now. Nobody's plane crashed yet so maybe it's fine.
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