A massive thrashing

Many, many moons ago my second job in aviation was as a mechanic in Beech's experimental hangar.  One of the crew had been at Beech since WWII, starting as a teenager building control surfaces for fighter planes; Kato.  I don't know if that was a first or last name - it was the only name anyone ever used - it was what his I.D. badge said - and one wag insisted that he had seen one of his paychecks and it was made out to "Kato" as well.  Anyway, he was the best sheet metal mechanic and aircraft systems man I have ever seen.  (You couldn't get him to touch an engine - Kato figured engine work was for grease monkeys.)  We were working on an air conditioning system in a King Air, pulling a vacuum on it to see if it was leaking.  The pressure wasn't falling fast enough for me; I wanted to start taking things apart to find the leaks.

"Son," intoned Kato from his seat by the service cart, "you gotta look at the good side 'till your sure you can't do that no more."  Kato knew that pulling vacuum on a new system could take a while as the water vapor was pulled from hundreds of feet of tubing that had been open to the humid, mid-western summer air.  He was teaching me not to jump to the worst conclusion until there was no other choice.

I put a major thrashing on Kintala this weekend.  (A pleasant change from having her put one on me.)  After a little less than two days her engine is sitting snug on 4 brand new engine mounts.  A job that turned out much harder than it sounds.  Over the years I picked up a lot of tricks when it comes to fixing things. This last weekend I was down to my last one for disassembling corroded parts.  The forward starboard mount was frozen solid in the engine case, one false move could easily lead to a cracked case and a near terminal injury for both bank account and cruising plans.  I ended up splitting the bottom (and utterly frozen) nut off the stud with an air chisel, then taking to the top nut with a 3/8s impact driver, jack-screwing the stud the wrong way (up instead of down) just enough to break it loose.  Then I hammered it down and jack-screwed it back up a few more times; and finally worked it out of the engine.  Heat and lots of penetrating oil were included in the recipe, and all of this accomplished in the few inches available with the engine hanging from a chain-fall supported by the boom, the boat rolling in wind guests to 20+ knots.  (Air tools and portable compressor supplied by Schmidty - who I'm going to write in for President of these United States; though he is way too smart to take the job.)

Mostly I got it done by taking one deliberate step after another, looking at the good side and not facing the worst until it actually happened.  Which it never did.  It was a close call though.  A slip of an air chisel or a hammer blow falling in the wrong place?  Had it been the forward port mount that was frozen there would have been no choice but to pull the engine out of the boat for access.  (Another major setback though not as bad as punching a hole through the case.) 

Instead, what I had feared would be at least a two-weekend-endless-thrash (that had several opportunities to turn into a total disaster) turned out to be a two day job-now-out-of-the-way.  I'm also going to keep reminding myself to look at the good side until I'm sure I can't do that no more.  The mounts are done.  There is no reason to think installing the tranny will be anything but routine.  We haven't decided what to do with the V-drive yet, replace or overhaul.  Either one will have to wait a while until we pry a spot open in the budget, but there is no reason to assume that will prove impossible either.  The big question is still the coupler - and for now I'm going to assume we will figure that one out as well.  We are still walking right along the edge of the cliff here, but it does no good to keep looking over to see how far the fall.

p.s.  If I ever hit the lottery I'm still going to buy me a NEW boat.  I know they come from the factory screwed up; but at least the screwed up parts won't be frozen together by 30 years of corrosion.