Spotted a weird fix on a Garmin G1000 at Scottsdale Airport last Tuesday

I was down at KSDL helping a buddy with an annual when I noticed one of the King Airs had a cracked display bezel taped up with foil tape. Turns out the pilot ran out of spares and just wanted to keep the stray light out. Anyone else run into field hacks that actually hold up better than the OEM parts?

3 comments

3 Comments

jakeb252mo ago

Buddy of mine out of Prescott did the same thing on his Cessna 206. Caught a glare off the cracked MFD bezel one afternoon and decided to patch it with some high-temp silicone tape he had in the toolbox. Looked janky as hell but the stuff held for two years through Arizona summers and winter cold snaps. He only replaced it when he finally found the OEM part on backorder and had to cut the tape off with a knife. The tape never peeled or bubbled once, worked better than the factory plastic ever did.

vera_campbell2mo ago

Did he ever get his tape endorsement added to his logbook? That kind of field approval sounds like it earned some FAA brownie points.

williamhill1mo ago

Didn't @jakeb25 mention that the tape held up for a full two years out there? That's wild, but I actually read somewhere that high-temp silicone tape was originally developed for aerospace wiring harnesses, so it's no surprise it worked so well on a Cessna bezel. My dad used to swear by the stuff for sealing up old engine baffles on his Cherokee, said it never melted or got brittle. I bet most people don't realize how much abuse that tape can take, especially compared to the flimsy factory plastic that cracks from just a little sun glare. It's funny how the janky field fixes sometimes outperform the OEM parts by miles, even if they look terrible while doing it. Sounds like your buddy got lucky finding that tape in his toolbox, a true workaround that deserves some respect.