O. Sami Saydjari wrote:
Well, it happended. I have owned the plane (Piper Turbo Arrow III) for
3 months and the engine failed during climb out on Tuesday. Altitude
was 4400 feet. Luckily, the engine did not entirely quit and I made it
to an airport within 10 miles. TBO was 1000 hours away. Dissapointing!

Way to go. I had a similar engine failure once and was able to make a nearby
airport under partial power with mucho vibration. It's an unforgettable experience.

When we cut the oil filter, it was full of fairly large aluminum and
steel bits of metal. Arg!

(1) Upon examination, the wire into the left magneto was found to be
broken off, just at its connection to the magneto. A mechanic theorized

What wire, the P-lead?

that it could have grounded to the magento housing. He said that that
could have actually caused a grounding of both magnetos and could have
fouled up the engine firing, and could have contributed to the failure.

Seems kinda far-fetched.

Later, he said that he thought that it was just a coincidence that the
left mag wire happened to have been broken when the engine failed due to
some other reason. What do you folks think? Could the two have been
tied togehter?

I don't want to say it's impossible, but it seems unlikely to me. What do I know?

Suppose the magneto could have come loose and spun around, breaking off the
wire, causing gross ignition mistiming and detonation, and leading to the
failure? I dunno, I'm just brainstorming.


(2) Now I am faced with having to have the engine overhauled. Growl!
The engine has brand new cylinders on it (well, they have about 100
hours on them) put on by the previous owner. So, I think we want to do
a custom overall of this particular engine. Does that make sense? Are
there different places who do this sort of thing with different
reputations for quality of work? If so, I would like to hear about

See if you find a copy of "The Major Overhaul", by Kas Thomas. It's out of
print. You might contact Kas himself and ask him where to get a copy.

recommendations (the engine is a TCM TSIO-360-FB) or perhaps criteria to
use in making a judgement. Also, are there different quality parts or
methods in doing the overhaul that are options that I need to specify
when I ask for the overhaul. In other words, if I can pay 10% more and
get more reliability, then I might like to have the option to do
that...but often, you have to be knowledgeable enough to ask for the
right things.