Maintenance

[IMGCAP(1)]The aircraft engine overhaul business certainly aint what it used to be.

For the past two decades, with the GA business in the tank, the engine market has become largely sacrificial. If any one segment gets more overhaul business, someone else loses it.

And the big losers have been smaller field overhaul shops, driven out of business by the factories who have replaced sagging new engine sales with a piece of the overhaul pie.

Costwise, this has benefited aircraft owners, exerting some downward price pressure on whats probably the most expensive periodic maintenance most will face.

On the other hand, finding a good shop to do the work is always a study in hand wringi…

[IMGCAP(1)]Heres a surprise: An aircraft lead-acid battery is designed to last 10 to 12 years, not the two to three years most of use as a replacement cycle. Insiders in the battery industry say that a lead/acid battery contains enough reactive material (lead) to last at least five times as long as most do.

So the loaded question is why don’t batteries last longer. Why do they seem to peter out and die in 36 months or so?

The reason may be twofold. One is that aircraft batteries suffer through long periods of disuse and the other is that the natural enemy of all lead-acid batteries is something called plate sulfation, which is thought to account for 80 percent of all battery failu…