Bertie:
Oh, and the J-3? Last time I saw it it had over 4,000 hours on the
engine and hadn;t even had a top.

Jay:
Those things run forever. Of course, they've got no compression or
power to begin with, so you won't notice any further loss...

;-)

Bertie:
There wasn't any further loss. I did the compression checks on it myself
sometimes, and they were still in the 70s then. We rented it out and we
couldn;t have done that if it wasn't sound.
the rest of the airplane, however, was a bit of a mess!
Still it held together the whole time I flew it. Mostly.

How does that work with regard to the 100-hr and annual inspections for
a rental aircraft? When I worked at the flight school, our mechanics
said you can run an engine past TBO, but they won't sign off an annual
or 100-hr beyond the manufacturer's published TBO. Is signing it off
after TBO not a direct violation of mechanic regs but just a matter of
finding a mechanic willing to take the risk (ours wouldn't do it)?