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Hot take: a 10 cent cotter pin almost cost me a $4,200 engine job at the Van Nuys hangar
I was doing a routine 100 hour on a 172 last Tuesday afternoon in Van Nuys when I hit the nose gear and something felt off with the shimmy damper. Sure enough, the cotter pin on the steering horn was gone, just flat not there, and the castellated nut had backed off maybe two threads. Somebody signed it off on the last annual six months ago, which means either they pencil whipped it or the pin sheared after the fact, and I honestly can't tell which one bugs me more. I grabbed a new pin from the bin, torqued the nut to spec, and flagged the log entry hard because if that thing had let go on rollout the owner was looking at a prop strike and a whole lot worse than a four grand repair bill. Called the previous shop to ask what they saw and got the runaround about records, so now I document every single cotter pin with a photo and a timestamp, takes me 30 extra seconds per gear and I don't care. The part that really gets me is how a 10 cent piece of wire is the difference between a plane flying and a plane eating pavement. Has anyone else caught a missing cotter pin on a prebuy and how did you handle telling the seller, because I'm still not sure I did that part right.
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