In article ,
"O. Sami Saydjari" wrote:

As I reading through my aircraft logs, I noticed several replacements of
the Directional Gyro and Turn Coordinator. The plane is a 1978 Piper
Turbo Arrow 3. Is is normal to need to replace these things every 4-5
years?

Does anyone keep statistics or even projections for the mean time
between failures on airplane parts? It sure would be useful to know.
One would think the manufacturers would publish such information.


I'm late to the party here, but I'll add my two cents:

I replaced the vac gyros in my Cherokee a couple years ago, with brand
new RC Allen gyros. They're still okay 200+ hour later, but they were
NEVER as good as the overhauled Sigma-Tek gyros that they replaced. I
had the Sigma-Tek's replaced because they had apparently been overhauled
and, presumably, owner installed. No yellow tags, no log entry, so I
assumed that they were 20+ years old original gyros, and I fly IFR.

When the RC Allens go, I'll seriously consider having them rebuilt by a
good overhaul shop, unless there's some compelling reason why I should
go out and invest in Sigma-Tek's again.



JKG