REFLECTIONS ON THE OCCASION OF MY SECOND ANNIVERSARY WITH T-51 LADY ELAINE
At the end of this month it will be 2 years since I purchased my Titan T-51 Lady Elaine, at which time it had been at the Titan hangar for 18 months undergoing the upgrade to the GM LS3 430 motor and “small” Autoflight gear-drive box, and I thought the occasion warranted some comments. While my financial investment is only modest by aircraft standards, being $143K purchase price and a subsequent $25K or so in insurance, hangar fees, and upgrades, I thought people might be interested in my experiences.
One interesting thing is the use of the passive voice in communications. I received a phone call saying “we have had a setback,” not “Sorry, a Titan employee started your plane at full throttle in a packed hangar and it damaged a lot of stuff.” Similarly, I was told “I heard you had trouble with your gearbox,” when the real story was “A Titan employee made an error in replacing a bearing and caused your gearbox to fail after 34 hours, for which there is no warranty coverage.” Passive voice is appropriate when something happens as “an act of God,” like a hurricane or earthquake, but that’s not what happened here.
Another interesting thing is Titan’s attitude toward time. After the hangar episode, which shredded the prop and damaged the right wing, I was told repairs would take a month. Actually it took 6 months. My gearbox has now been in Ohio for 3 ½ months with their ex-master machinist for what was described as a 10 hour job. The original time estimate given for the engine upgrade was 4-6 months. Actually it took 20 months before it's first flight.
A third interesting thing is the lack of communication that occurs between company and customer. At the end of the 12 months or so they spent trying to diagnose an engine misfire, the engine threw a rod. The cause of the misfire and eventual thrown rod, not surprisingly, was found to be an error by a Titan employee. In installing the gearbox on the engine an error was made which caused the crank to be pressed against the thrust washer, eventually causing the catastrophic failure. What was I, the customer, told about this? Just that they had decided to replace the engine, like they were doing me a favor. I only learned the truth because I happened to speak with an ex-employee who took the engine apart after the event. There is nothing written in the log book about any of these events, by the way- not about what was done for the upgrade exactly, no serial numbers of any of the parts installed, no documentation of the actual hours flown.
According to one person on the Titan forum I am just a whiner who “needs to grow a pair,” and it might be that aircraft ownership in general is like this, so others will feel the same. If so, so be it. But I think that after waiting a year and a half and investing $170K, some people would feel the airplane suffering a major mechanical failure 30 minutes after arriving at their home airport would be a “last straw” event and they would “sell the **** thing.” I’m hanging in there because the plane is way cool and there are no good alternatives, so maybe I deserve a little credit.
At the end of this month it will be 2 years since I purchased my Titan T-51 Lady Elaine, at which time it had been at the Titan hangar for 18 months undergoing the upgrade to the GM LS3 430 motor and “small” Autoflight gear-drive box, and I thought the occasion warranted some comments. While my financial investment is only modest by aircraft standards, being $143K purchase price and a subsequent $25K or so in insurance, hangar fees, and upgrades, I thought people might be interested in my experiences.
One interesting thing is the use of the passive voice in communications. I received a phone call saying “we have had a setback,” not “Sorry, a Titan employee started your plane at full throttle in a packed hangar and it damaged a lot of stuff.” Similarly, I was told “I heard you had trouble with your gearbox,” when the real story was “A Titan employee made an error in replacing a bearing and caused your gearbox to fail after 34 hours, for which there is no warranty coverage.” Passive voice is appropriate when something happens as “an act of God,” like a hurricane or earthquake, but that’s not what happened here.
Another interesting thing is Titan’s attitude toward time. After the hangar episode, which shredded the prop and damaged the right wing, I was told repairs would take a month. Actually it took 6 months. My gearbox has now been in Ohio for 3 ½ months with their ex-master machinist for what was described as a 10 hour job. The original time estimate given for the engine upgrade was 4-6 months. Actually it took 20 months before it's first flight.
A third interesting thing is the lack of communication that occurs between company and customer. At the end of the 12 months or so they spent trying to diagnose an engine misfire, the engine threw a rod. The cause of the misfire and eventual thrown rod, not surprisingly, was found to be an error by a Titan employee. In installing the gearbox on the engine an error was made which caused the crank to be pressed against the thrust washer, eventually causing the catastrophic failure. What was I, the customer, told about this? Just that they had decided to replace the engine, like they were doing me a favor. I only learned the truth because I happened to speak with an ex-employee who took the engine apart after the event. There is nothing written in the log book about any of these events, by the way- not about what was done for the upgrade exactly, no serial numbers of any of the parts installed, no documentation of the actual hours flown.
According to one person on the Titan forum I am just a whiner who “needs to grow a pair,” and it might be that aircraft ownership in general is like this, so others will feel the same. If so, so be it. But I think that after waiting a year and a half and investing $170K, some people would feel the airplane suffering a major mechanical failure 30 minutes after arriving at their home airport would be a “last straw” event and they would “sell the **** thing.” I’m hanging in there because the plane is way cool and there are no good alternatives, so maybe I deserve a little credit.