We see many airplanes come in way past the recomended Slick magneto 500 hr SB. Most of them have some worn parts in them, and some are potentialy pretty serious. I opened one up today that had right at 502 hours on it, and thought I would share with you why these should be done.
This one was ready to fail. I'm actually surprised it was working with any reliabilty, considering all of the metal shavings inside it. It appears that the carbon brush had worn completely down, and now the shaft of the distributor gear was cutting directly into the coil contact.
I've not ever seen one this bad at 500 hours. We all know that the RV's have been commanding some premium prices for some time now, and as with any "opportunistic" times, there are builders that go on the cheap and make a pretty good profit for the unawares buyer. In this case, it was an RV-10, in which a field re-built engine was installed. My guess would be that a "new" magneto was not really used.
Do pay attention to SB's. They are there for a reason. For those of you who are non-builder owners, make sure you ask your A&P to cehck them for you.
Vic
This one was ready to fail. I'm actually surprised it was working with any reliabilty, considering all of the metal shavings inside it. It appears that the carbon brush had worn completely down, and now the shaft of the distributor gear was cutting directly into the coil contact.
I've not ever seen one this bad at 500 hours. We all know that the RV's have been commanding some premium prices for some time now, and as with any "opportunistic" times, there are builders that go on the cheap and make a pretty good profit for the unawares buyer. In this case, it was an RV-10, in which a field re-built engine was installed. My guess would be that a "new" magneto was not really used.
Do pay attention to SB's. They are there for a reason. For those of you who are non-builder owners, make sure you ask your A&P to cehck them for you.
Vic