Loading…
18
Rant: I swore off torque seal for 12 years and one borescope check made me eat my words
For years I told every new guy in the shop that torque seal was a crutch for lazy inspectors and that a real mechanic checks fasteners by feel and a paint stick. I held that line through three jobs and two airlines, right up until a 737 coming out of a C-check at our hangar in Tulsa last month. We had a hydraulic line fitting on the left main gear that passed the feel test, passed the paint mark check, but our lead found it weeping during a borescope pass on the strut. Turned out the paint mark was sitting on the nut, not the fitting body, so the whole line had been backing off for about 40 flight hours and nobody caught it. Cost us a gear swing and a very quiet safety stand down. I put seal on every fitting I touch now and I have zero shame about it. Anybody else get humbled by something they bad mouthed for a decade?
1 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In1 Comment
wren2304d ago
A paint stick still caught 99% of loose nuts for 12 years in Tulsa.
4