On Fri, 16 Feb 2007 21:21:03 -0500, Doug Vetter wrote:

Hi all,

With the recent topics on Annuals hitting the group, I figured I'd
relate my own, indulge myself in a short rant, and ask a question of you.

Just got the call from our A&P today and our 172 w/180HP Avcon
Conversion came through the annual in pretty good shape. Unfortunately,
we did manage to get caught on one thing -- in spite of having spent
almost $3K to overhaul our Hartzell CS prop in 2003, we just learned
that it was hit with an AD issued in September 2006 for hub cracks.

We have to fly out to our prop shop and have them do an eddy current
inspection within the next few flight hours to determine if the hub can
remain airworthy (ironic that they ask us to FLY it there), and then we
have two choices:

1) Do the inspection again every 100 hours or 12 months, whichever comes
first. It costs about $200 + the flight time to go out there, or about
$400.

or

2) Spend about $2500 to replace the hub to terminate the reoccurring
inspection.



Anyone else affected by this AD?


Just went through it with my Mooney. I opted for the hub replacement.

By the way, IF you opt for the hub replacement, you won't necessarily have
to do that first eddy current inspection you mentioned above, unless you
want to wait to do the replacement. And your regular shop can pull the
prop and send it off to the shop (that's what we did).

Also, Hartzell, in their infinite wisdom, would send ME a hub, but would
not send it to my prop shop. Fortunately, the shop had a post-AD new hub
on the shelf; so we were able to do a swap with minimum down-time.


--ron