Page 23 - Volume 15 Number 8

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you find corrosion, there’s going to be more. These log entries had my antennae on alert.
I stepped into the hangar to look at the aircraft. The engine cowls were open. As I peered in I could see corrosion on the outside of the reduction gearbox, clearly visible to the naked eye. I thought if the outside was this bad, what does the inside look like? Unfortunately, a borescope won’t show me the inside of the reduction gearbox, but I didn’t really need to see it. I know what corrosion can do in an engine. There is more steel and aluminum in there than you might think – “strike two.”
The splice plates were deeply corroded and had not been squawked or remedied. This would be a very expensive fix and apparently the seller was not entertaining any reduction in price. So that was it – “strike three” and game over. We packed up and left. One of the prospective buyers was on-site with us and took everyone to dinner afterward. He told me he learned his lesson about pre-buys and was grateful his DOM had insisted I be brought to the job. He admitted being seduced by the dazzling paint job and the new panel. He was ready
AUGUST 2021
to sign on the dotted line and was thankful for our diligence on his behalf.
A Preliminary Check for Corrosion
Chip’s post mentioned a few areas of concern that he sees cropping up repeatedly in recently purchased King Airs where no pre-buy was performed. Corrosion was at the top of his list. I’ve written about corrosion in this publication several times, including the February issue this year. In a nutshell, corrosion is destructive and once it starts spreading, it doesn’t stop. Also, corrosion that is found but not treated correctly will come back.
As the King Air fleet gets older,
corrosion becomes a greater
concern to prospective buyers. Chip
had a brilliant idea – he proposed
that buyers have a corrosion
inspection completed before the
engine borescopes and Phase 1-4.
Coincidentally, I was engaged to
do exactly that! A couple of months
before Chip’s post, a buyer hired
me to inspect a B200 specifically
for corrosion. This buyer already
owned one King Air, but after the
purchase some serious corrosion
issues were discovered. The remedy
was very costly. When he found
himself in the market for another
King Air, he hired me to complete a
focused check on corrosion, before
proceeding with the rest of his pre-
buy plans. The subject aircraft had
been in South America and the
prospective buyer was in Africa.
COVID-19 restrictions had made 30 travel unfeasible for the buyer, so he
had the aircraft moved to a shop in the U.S. where the borescope and Phase 1-4 would be performed.
Before the Phases, however, I performed the corrosion check. If I found anything that could kill the deal, the buyer could then cut his losses and save his Phase 1-4 money for the next prospect. This arrangement worked well. I used a “Corrosion Control Checklist” from the King Air 200 maintenance manual. It’s an optional guide for
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