Job No. 15494

ECI/NTSB/FAA MEETING February 14, 2013

Phone: 817-336-3042 depos@merittexas.com Fax: 817-335-1203

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6 TRANSCRIPT OF

7 ECI/NTSB/FAA MEETING

8

9 FAA Southwest Regional Offices

10 2601 Meacham Boulevard

11 Fort Worth, Texas

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14 February 14, 2013

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Job No. 15494

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1 PRESENT AT MEETING:

2 Name Group

3 Bennett, Vince ....................ANE-7

 Cox, Fran .........................ASW-190

4 Crookshanks, Clint ................NTSB

 Denton, Byron .....................AEC

5 Dunn, Theresa .....................ASW-7

 Euler, Arlan (Via Telephone).......SAT-MIDO

6 Garvens, Jeff .....................DAS/ECI/AEC

 Gillespie, Don ....................DELTA G DESIGN

7 Hakala, Peter .....................ASW-190

 Harman, Keuthe ....................ASW-190

8 Laufman, Steve (Via Telephone).....SAT-MIDO

 Maguire, Wayne.....................ANE-111

9 NASH, Derek .......................NTSB

 Priester, Jurgen ..................ASW-190

10 Sharon, Gary ......................ASW-190

 Stoller, Ty .......................DAS/ECI/AEC

11 Thompson, Matthew .................ASW-190

 Vickers, Bill......................ASW-190

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Job No. 15494

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1 MS. COX: Let's first go around the room

2 real quick to make sure that everybody knows who

3 everybody is. Starting with you, sir.

4 MR. NASH: Derek Nash, NTSB.

5 MR. CROOKSHANKS: Clint Crookshanks, NTSB.

6 MR. GILLESPIE: Don Gillespie, Delta G

7 Design.

8 MR. HAKALA: Pete Hakala, ASW-190.

9 MR. THOMPSON: Matt Thompson, ASW-190.

10 MR. MAGUIRE: Wayne Maguire -- oh. Sorry.

11 MR. HARMON: Go ahead, Wayne.

12 MR. MAGUIRE: Wayne Maguire, ANE-111,

13 Burlington, Massachusetts.

14 MR. HARMON: Kuethe Harmon, Program

15 Manager, ASW-190.

16 MR. PRIESTER: Jurgen Priester, ASW-190.

17 MR. SHARON: I'm Gary Sharon, Branch

18 Manager in ASW-190.

19 MS. COX: I'm Fran Cox, Manager in ASW-190.

20 MS. DUNN: Theresa Dunn, Regional Counsel's

21 Office here in Southwest Region.

22 MR. BENNETT: Vincent Bennett. Directorate

23 Counsel.

24 MR. VICKERS: Bill Vickers, ASW-190.

25 MR. DENTON: Bryonn Denton, Airmotive
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1 Engineering.

2 MR. GARVENS: Jeff Garvens, Danbury

3 AeroSpace.

4 MR. STOLLER: Ty Stoller, Danbury

5 AeroSpace.

6 MR. TUBBS: Jimmy Tubbs, Danbury AeroSpace.

7 MS. COX: On the phone?

8 MR. THOMPSON: Steve, Arlen, can you

9 introduce?

10 MR. LAUFMAN: Yes, I'm sorry. We're having

11 a little intermittent connection here.

12 I'm Steve Laufman in San Antonio. I'm the

13 principal inspector for Airmotive Engineering.

14 MR. EULER: Yes. And Arlan Euler, the

15 senior ASI out of San Antonio-MIDO.

16 MS. COX: Okay. And we have our court

17 reporter here.

18 So, and also, on other logistics, we've got

19 this on Sametime so that MIDO can see the presentation

20 also.

21 MR. LAUFMAN: Great.

22 MS. COX: And I want to just say thank you

23 to everybody. I know some people have traveled in here

24 to make this happen. AEC has requested this meeting

25 and I appreciate everyone making it happen.
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1 So you had some information you wanted to

2 share with us. We are here to listen, we are open to

3 what you have to say, and we will turn it over to

4 you-all.

5 MR. STOLLER: Okay. I would like to give a

6 little quick overview of our company so that the names

7 aren't confusing.

8 Danbury AeroSpace is the parent company and

9 we reorganized about five years ago to represent the

10 different units of the FAA that influence different

11 areas of our business.

12 Airmotive Engineering Corporation is the

13 design and manufacturing group that designs the

14 components, holds the FAA approvals.

15 Precision Machine Air Parts does the

16 manufacturing of many of the components, the large

17 machined items we do in-house.

18 EC Services is a FAA-approved repair

19 station.

20 And then Engine Components International is

21 the company that faces the customers and interfaces

22 with and sells the products and distributes them to the

23 market.

24 Today we are here to talk about cylinders,

25 but we want to show you just sort of all the other
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1 components that we manufacture. We hold over 2,000

2 FAA-approved parts through 64 different PMA

3 supplements. We also have numerous STCs and are -- now

4 that we have all the parts to make a complete engine,

5 we are pursuing a type certificate.

6 Our engineering and design and testing

7 expertise has been relied upon by such research

8 institutions like Baylor University, Southwest Research

9 Institute in San Antonio and ConocoPhillips.

10 I'd like to give a little overview of the

11 agenda. We have a lot of items we would like to go

12 over today.

13 First, we would like to make our key

14 points, then our objectives for this meeting. We would

15 like to go over and summarize a meeting we had last

16 week with the NTSB. We'd like to give you some

17 background on the situation, how we got to this point

18 where we are today. We'd like to share our research on

19 the industry-wide failure history of cylinders.

20 There's further testing we've done. We

21 have now accomplished testing that would allow us to

22 present a cylinder safety program that we would like to

23 give for consideration. Then, more recently, we've

24 done finite element analysis on the critical areas of

25 this part and would like to share that with you. Then
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1 we want to go over some of the statistical analysis

2 that's been done on the parts, and then we'd like to

3 discuss what we think are industry consequences of an

4 NPRM on this particular part and then we would like to

5 have some time at the end for discussions and

6 resolution.

7 MR. GARVENS: Shall we talk about the

8 binders and all? Have we passed them out?

9 MR. STOLLER: Yes.

10 MR. DENTON: Yes. We've passed out some

11 binders with supporting documentation. I have some

12 here and some more available with these slides with

13 some notes. If anyone would like some, there's some

14 extra here.

15 MR. GARVENS: So under tab 1 are the slides

16 if you want to take notes.

17 MS. COX: Is there any proprietary

18 information in the binder?

19 MR. TUBBS: Except that my presentation has

20 been updated considerably since then.

21 MR. GARVENS: Fran asked if there's any

22 proprietary data in the binder that we need to be

23 concerned about.

24 MR. TUBBS: Yes, there is some proprietary.

25 The engineering report in there is proprietary data and
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1 we have so -- we have identified it as such.

2 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: What tab was that,

3 Jimmy?

4 MR. STOLLER: One. Well, it's a

5 presentation.

6 MR. TUBBS: Yeah, I -- I'm sorry. I don't

7 have a notebook in front of me. I don't know what tab

8 that would be.

9 MR. GARVENS: Looks like it's 22. Jimmy,

10 look under 22.

11 MR. TUBBS: This is the wrong one.

12 MR. GARVENS: Is it this?

13 MR. TUBBS: Yes. That is right. Under 22.

14 MR. DENTON: Ready?

15 MR. STOLLER: Yes. Next slide.

16 I'd like to go over some key points to

17 contemplate as we go through our various presentations.

18 The first is that there have been no

19 fatalities, no injuries and no reported accidents

20 resulting from newly manufactured TITAN replacement

21 cylinders for 520/550 series Continental engines.

22 The design of the AEC cylinders exceeds the

23 FAA airworthiness standards.

24 The manufacture of AEC cylinders is within

25 the design parameters that have been approved.
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1 It is our belief through testing that the

2 operating environment is the cause of the failures.

3 Our cylinders are safe when operating

4 within the limits of the design parameters of the

5 engines.

6 We believe that field replacement of

7 cylinders would cause significant safety risks.

8 Our research has shown that head barrel

9 separations are an industry-wide issue; again, caused

10 by adverse operating conditions.

11 Any questions or comments at this point?

12 Next we would like to outline our

13 objectives for the meeting.

14 We are here to prevent an unwarranted

15 action on AEC 520 TITAN cylinders; to prevent

16 unnecessary safety risks caused by such unwarranted

17 action.

18 We are here to demonstrate that the root

19 cause of the head barrel separation is adverse

20 operating conditions.

21 We are going to establish that the design

22 and manufacture of AEC cylinders exceeds FAA

23 airworthiness standards and that there is no basis for

24 removal of AEC cylinders from the field.

25 On February 7th, we made a similar
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1 presentation - with not as much detail as we will go

2 over today - with the NTSB.

3 They agreed that A-12-7, Safety

4 Recommendation A-12-7 was written prior to the testing

5 and the results indicating root cause as the operating

6 conditions.

7 The NTSB has agreed that there have been no

8 fatalities as a result of the head barrel separations

9 of new TITAN 520 cylinders.

10 They agreed that removal of AEC cylinders

11 from the field prior to TBO was unwarranted.

12 They agreed to a reduction of scope of the

13 Safety Recommendation A-12-7.

14 And the NTSB suggested that the best path

15 to reducing the scope of A-12-7 is for the FAA to

16 propose an alternative.

17 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: That meeting on

18 February 7th was with Clint and Derek. Anybody else

19 there?

20 MR. CROOKSHANKS: Yes. Several other

21 people from the NTSB were involved, including the upper

22 management for the Office of Aviation Safety, right.

23 MR. GARVENS: Right. So the Director of

24 Office of Aviation Safety, John DeLisi, was there and

25 he sort of ran the meeting. There were some other
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1 people, the Director of Communications.

2 MR. DENTON: Thomas Zoeller.

3 MR. GARVENS: Yes, Thomas Zoeller.

4 MR. CROOKSHANKS: Yes, and Deputy Director

5 of Research and Engineering. There was myself. There

6 was --

7 MR. GARVENS: Carolyn Deforge.

8 MR. CROOKSHANKS: Carolyn Deforge who is my

9 immediate boss. His boss.

10 MR. GARVENS: James Ritter.

11 MR. CROOKSHANKS: Yes. So there was a

12 bunch of people there.

13 MR. TUBBS: And Michael Fox.

14 MR. DENTON: It was originally scheduled

15 with the chairman --

16 MR. GARVENS: That's right.

17 MR. DENTON: -- then and she had to --

18 MR. GARVENS: Work on batteries.

19 MR. CROOKSHANKS: Yes.

20 MR. GARVENS: Change battery in her plane.

21 MR. THOMPSON: Clint, is that an accurate

22 summary?

23 MR. CROOKSHANKS: Yes. All those people

24 were there.

25 MR. MAGUIRE: Pardon me. Will you explain
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1 later the term regarding the scope should be reduced,

2 or would you explain it now?

3 MR. TUBBS: We're going to talk about what

4 we propose in a later presentation, Wayne, if that's

5 all right.

6 MR. GARVENS: I think your question was

7 more in terms of our summary as a meeting, how Clint

8 felt about that, or -- I was just wondering if he

9 answered your question.

10 MR. MAGUIRE: It's answered.

11 MR. DENTON: All right. I'll move on. So

12 I wanted to go into just a bit of a situation

13 background.

14 ACE has done extensive research in the FAA

15 Service Difficulty Report database. We have found that

16 about 80 percent of these reports on piston engine

17 parts are related to cylinders.

18 Cylinders are exposed to severe temperature

19 cycles even when operated within limits. They are

20 exposed to subzero temperatures, to combustion

21 temperatures over 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The

22 cylinder's combustion chamber can experience combustion

23 pressures over 1,000 psi. Since these cylinders are

24 air cooled, there is an uneven and inconsistent cooling

25 environment.
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1 The head-to-barrel interface is a

2 mechanically complex system that includes a cast

3 aluminum head and a forged steel barrel, and, let's

4 see, moving on, the FAA Service Difficulty Report

5 database search resulted in more than 1200 entries of

6 head-to-barrel separations for Continental-manufactured

7 cylinders. In 2003 --

8 MR. STOLLER: If you would like to see

9 them --

10 MR. DENTON: Yes.

11 MR. STOLLER: -- we have copies of those

12 here. So we have copies of the current FAA database

13 for Service Difficulty Reports.

14 MR. DENTON: Off the current, the current

15 SDR website.

16 MR. STOLLER: And then we have downloads

17 from the previous site to support that, and we have

18 printouts of all reported Difficulty Reports related to

19 head-barrel separations of any Continental cylinders.

20 MR. SHARON: Did that change any from what

21 y'all provided before? You gave us a list of --

22 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: It was bigger.

23 MR. STOLLER: We've had time to go through

24 every single one of them and we have --

25 MR. DENTON: And also part --
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1 MR. STOLLER: -- a larger list than before.

2 MR. DENTON: Part 2 procedures, you know,

3 we have gone through Part 2 procedures, so it has

4 actually been expanded.

5 MR. THOMPSON: Do you have a list of your

6 queries that you ran on this?

7 MR. DENTON: Yes. Don't have it with us,

8 but I do have a list.

9 MR. THOMPSON: Is that something you can

10 provide to us?

11 MR. DENTON: Yes, I can get someone working

12 on that this afternoon.

13 MR. TUBBS: Now, the only difficulty is the

14 older data was provided to us by Benny Beets, and maybe

15 he could resurrect it, but I -- I certainly can't.

16 I've tried.

17 MR. THOMPSON: We have a current database

18 on it that goes back to about '93.

19 MR. DENTON: And what I have also got is I

20 have also got a spreadsheet that basically has all of

21 the control numbers so you could actually -- we -- you

22 know, you could reference all the control numbers and

23 then, you know, you could enter the control number in,

24 find the individual entry and then, you know, it could

25 -- all of that can be verified and vetted.
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1 MR. STOLLER: And these copies were made to

2 be left here.

3 MS. COX: What time frame is this for each

4 of these?

5 MR. DENTON: We've gotten -- so we've

6 gotten -- the next slide actually goes through a plot.

7 So it goes from 1974 to current. So the old database

8 goes from 1974 to 2003 -- or excuse me, 2002, and the

9 new database we have searched from two thousand and --

10 the end of 2002 to current. So as of yesterday. We

11 have data up to yesterday in that binder. So that's

12 actually a plot of what is in that binder.

13 The blue line is the Continental

14 head-barrel separations and the red line is AEC

15 head-barrel separations. So FAA and AEC data show less

16 than 40 AEC new TITAN 520 cylinder head-to-barrel

17 separations.

18 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Did you correlate

19 any of that data that you have there with previous ADEs

20 that have been done on various cylinders -- and steps

21 to correct those?

22 MR. DENTON: There have been --

23 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: -- steps to correct

24 those?

25 MR. DENTON: There have been no ADEs
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1 addressing head-barrel separations on Continental

2 cylinders.

3 MR. GILLESPIE: Continental manufactured

4 cylinders.

5 MR. DENTON: Continental manufactured

6 cylinders.

7 MR. PRIESTER: When was the initial

8 introduction, what year were the first ECI 520/550's

9 introduced to the field?

10 MR. TUBBS: Well, the original ones were

11 introduced in 1999 after the approval in 1998, and but

12 we changed to the TITAN - that was the classic cast

13 cylinders - and we produced them until about 2002,

14 toward the end of 2002, and the TITAN cylinder then

15 came in to -- there was an ADE on the classic cast

16 cylinders.

17 MR. PRIESTER: But 1998 would mark the

18 beginning of ECI's venture into this?

19 MR. TUBBS: That's correct.

20 MR. PRIESTER: 1998.

21 MR. TUBBS: Yeah. The program was

22 conducted in '96, '97 and early '98. Completed in '98.

23 MR. PRIESTER: So they started going into

24 the field in '99?

25 MR. TUBBS: Yes.
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1 MR. PRIESTER: Approval late '98 and

2 then --

3 MR. TUBBS: Took a while to get them in

4 production.

5 MR. PRIESTER: Okay. Thank you.

6 MR. CROOKSHANKS: Is this data just SDR

7 reports?

8 MR. DENTON: That's correct.

9 MR. TUBBS: Just. That's all it is.

10 MR. DENTON: That is all it is.

11 MR. CROOKSHANKS: Okay.

12 MR. DENTON: So no new AEC TITAN cylinder

13 manufactured after June 2008 has experienced a

14 head-barrel separation, and no head-barrel separation

15 on new AEC TITAN cylinders have been reported since

16 August 2011.

17 AEC's experience with head-barrel

18 separations is that they are not categorically a

19 catastrophic engine failure. There have been zero

20 fatalities, zero incident -- or zero accidents and zero

21 injuries as a result of newly manufactured TITAN

22 520/550 cylinders.

23 A head-to-barrel separation results in

24 approximately a 20% loss in engine power. This loss of

25 power allows sufficient power to land safely.
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1 Now I am going to hand it over to Jimmy. I

2 guess we'll go over this slide, and then I'm going to

3 jump out and into another presentation from Jimmy.

4 MR. GARVENS: Do you have any questions on

5 the background situation? Any further clarifications?

6 MR. THOMPSON: And you said the SDR had

7 a -- went up through when?

8 MR. DENTON: It's from 1974 to current.

9 MR. THOMPSON: To current as in?

10 MR. DENTON: Yesterday.

11 MR. THOMPSON: Yesterday. Okay.

12 MR. DENTON: Jimmy.

13 MR. TUBBS: Yes. Can you hit the --

14 MR. DENTON: Are you ready? Okay.

15 MR. TUBBS: Oh yeah. I'm ready.

16 MR. DENTON: I didn't know if you wanted to

17 go over this slide first.

18 MR. TUBBS: I'm ready.

19 MR. DENTON: Okay.

20 MR. TUBBS: I need a cue to start with.

21 Okay. What I would like to do is go over

22 the program that we have been working on from the

23 technical perspective to identify the root cause of the

24 cylinder head separation and then to look at how that

25 reflects in the real world out with these things
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1 operating in the field.

2 MR. PRIESTER: Where are you now, Jimmy?

3 MR. TUBBS: I'm sorry?

4 MR. PRIESTER: Oh, it looks like it's tab

5 14? Is that where you are?

6 MR. TUBBS: Yes. Now --

7 MR. GARVENS: They won't match.

8 MR. TUBBS: They will not match, Jurgen.

9 MR. PRIESTER: Oh.

10 MR. TUBBS: And, I'm sorry, because I

11 worked on some of this, went in last night at about

12 midnight. So -- so let's --

13 MR. GARVENS: And we can give --

14 MR. TUBBS: We're going to give --

15 MR. DENTON: -- an updated--

16 MR. TUBBS: We're going to give you an

17 updated version of this.

18 All right. Who is turning the page?

19 Okay. The cylinders that we have produced

20 since that 2002, which we started the Oberdorfer

21 castings and also what we call the TITAN cylinder, we

22 produced about 27,000 of those through June of 2008.

23 Of that number, there were 24 of them that had the

24 head-barrel separation caused by the thread fatigue.

25 There were seven of those that were produced after
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1 2005.

2 Now, I've limited this to just those that

3 have experienced the thread fatigue failure issue that

4 we have been working on.

5 There are two other types of failures,

6 which is the head separation at the top of the barrel.

7 We addressed that in 2004, if I recall the number

8 right, and -- by increasing the fillet radius, and we

9 have had no more failures of cylinders produced since

10 that time with that particular failure.

11 The second one is one that is an unusual

12 and it causes us to ponder a bit because that is a

13 failure where the cylinder head just expands rapidly

14 enough that the head comes off of the barrel without

15 either stripping, or in some cases partially stripping

16 the threads, but in some cases has actually come off of

17 the barrel with no damage to the threads. And that has

18 to be very, very hot, and in fact we've got -- we've

19 got one of those cylinders here. We brought the one I

20 believe that shows partially stripped threads where it

21 de-coupled, and then as it cocked it stripped out some

22 of the threads but the others are not stripped.

23 MR. PRIESTER: Jimmy, how many occurrences

24 of that particular failure mode do we know of?

25 MR. TUBBS: I believe that I -- that we
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1 have three of those.

2 MR. PRIESTER: Matt, do we have those on

3 our list?

4 MR. THOMPSON: I'd have to look.

5 MR. PRIESTER: That's a different failure

6 mode that we haven't really been --

7 MR. STOLLER: It's a different situation,

8 but what it shows is how hot a cylinder can get. In

9 operation, it can get hot enough to where the aluminum

10 can expand so much, that the head just completely slips

11 in two. And that can just be really mathematically --

12 MR. GARVENS: And this cylinder -- this

13 cylinder still has the same interference tolerance at

14 design and assembly.

15 MR. TUBBS: Yes.

16 MR. NASH: Do you have an estimate of the

17 temperature the cylinder head has to get to to make up

18 that --

19 MR. TUBBS: Well, we -- we put them

20 together at 650.

21 MR. NASH: Yes, that's why I'm asking the

22 question.

23 MR. TUBBS: That -- you've got --

24 MR. STOLLER: So at 650 it would unscrew,

25 but it can't unscrew with the --
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1 MR. NASH: Right.

2 MR. GARVENS: So it's got to get --

3 MR. NASH: So how hot does it get --

4 MR. TUBBS: Yes.

5 MR. NASH: -- to sort of just --

6 MR. GARVENS: Right.

7 MR. NASH: -- pop off the sides?

8 MR. TUBBS: Probably 700 degrees or so.

9 MR. GARVENS: But we don't have the -- when

10 we assemble it, we don't have the combustion pressures.

11 MR. TUBBS: Right.

12 MR. GARVENS: With combustion pressures,

13 probably 650.

14 MR. NASH: Yeah, but to --

15 MR. GILLESPIE: So you haven't done the

16 testing --

17 MR. NASH: -- to leave the barrel

18 without --

19 MR. GILLESPIE: -- for that, thought,

20 right?

21 MR. TUBBS: No, we have not.

22 MR. GILLESPIE: So you did not --

23 MR. GARVENS: No, we have not tested for

24 that.

25 MR. GILLESPIE: You're not here to --
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1 MR. TUBBS: No.

2 MR. NASH: Yeah.

3 MR. TUBBS: It's just -- it's a --

4 MR. GARVENS: We know that it had to get to

5 extreme temperatures to -- for this to happen.

6 MR. GILLESPIE: It's beyond anything you

7 tested --

8 MR. TUBBS: That's right.

9 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: -- because you have

10 not had that occur in any of your tests.

11 MR. TUBBS: We have not been able to

12 achieve that in the test cells, and we have -- we have

13 run engines up to 600 degrees. In fact, the engine

14 that we still have, the instrumented engine, it has

15 been run quite a while at 600. Well, between 580 and

16 600 degrees.

17 MR. VICKERS: Jimmy, other than the

18 separation, is that showing any other signs of thermal

19 stress? Do you see anything?

20 MR. TUBBS: Not really. We haven't seen

21 a -- you know, I would expect to see some detonation

22 evidence, I would expect to see maybe some

23 overtemperature in the spark plugs, but it happened so

24 fast, that just --

25 MR. STOLLER: Yes, it cannot run very long
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1 at that temperature.

2 MR. TUBBS: Right.

3 MR. STOLLER: So.

4 MR. PRIESTER: Jimmy, again, did I hear you

5 correctly that you would -- you would estimate that in

6 order for that cylinder, that barrel to fall out of the

7 head, you're saying that this particular cylinder we

8 are looking at probably was operated at 700 degrees?

9 MR. TUBBS: Between six -- between 650 and

10 700 degrees for a short time frame. Jurgen, unless you

11 can come up with a theory that tells me that that

12 barrel was cooled rapidly, you know, you have to --

13 heat is what is generated and so --

14 MR. PRIESTER: Have you, Jimmy, have you

15 ever seen data from the field where a CHT has gotten up

16 to 700 degrees?

17 MR. TUBBS: Oh, we've seen -- we've got one

18 recorded, I don't -- I probably have it on my computer,

19 that was provided to us by Mike Busch, where they had a

20 loose spark plug and it went to I think 635 or a little

21 more, but it -- it went into some other problems. But

22 it -- a loose spark plug or cracked insulator can cause

23 that real quick.

24 MR. GARVENS: Like how quick?

25 MR. TUBBS: The one that we have recorded
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1 data on was increasing at 2.8 degrees per second on an

2 average.

3 MR. PRIESTER: That was the cylinder?

4 MR. TUBBS: Well, no, I don't know about

5 this one. This one just came -- came in to us with a

6 warranty, and when we got it and pulled it apart -- the

7 guy said the -- the head came off. So we --

8 MR. PRIESTER: Did you ask the operator if

9 they had a -- a digital system on board the aircraft

10 that would have recorded the temperatures and

11 exceedances for this event?

12 MR. TUBBS: Not for this one.

13 MR. PRIESTER: Again, after --

14 MR. TUBBS: Hindsight is really good.

15 MR. PRIESTER: What's that?

16 MR. TUBBS: Hindsight would -- in hindsight

17 now today, we would be ask -- that's a part of the

18 forms that our people use to assess these today. But

19 in the day that this happened we had not done that.

20 MS. COX: Out of curiosity, what is the

21 interference fit on this particular cylinder?

22 MR. GARVENS: It's 11 to 12.

23 MR. TUBBS: I think it's 11 to 12,

24 somewhere right in there.

25 MR. STOLLER: It was verified yesterday.
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1 MR. TUBBS: Yeah, it was verified.

2 MR. DENTON: Yes, we checked it.

3 MR. STOLLER: Remeasured.

4 MR. HARMON: The other two that failed in

5 the same mode, do you know what the interference fit

6 there was?

7 MR. TUBBS: I don't know. I'm sorry.

8 MR. STOLLER: We verified -- I don't have

9 the numbers on them, but we verified that they were

10 within tolerances, that it was not a manufacturing --

11 MR. PRIESTER: When you say "11 to 12," are

12 you saying 11 for the shrink band and 12 for the

13 thread?

14 MR. GARVENS: We are talking about a

15 90-degree angles. It's out of round.

16 MR. TUBBS: Right, yeah. Right. But in

17 both the straight band and the thread area, yes.

18 MR. PRIESTER: Both were at --

19 MR. TUBBS: Yes.

20 MR. PRIESTER: -- 11 -- between 11 and 12.

21 MR. TUBBS: Yes, as well as they could

22 measure this.

23 MR. GARVENS: The threads had some -- the

24 threads get distorted, you know.

25 MR. PRIESTER: I was going to say, can you
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1 measure accurately the interference fit after they've

2 already been assembled and operated at high

3 temperatures?

4 MR. STOLLER: We do do that regularly,

5 that's part of our research. So we unscrew cylinders

6 that come into the repair station and we measure them.

7 MR. PRIESTER: Compare it to the when they

8 left originally?

9 MR. GARVENS: Do we have the -- do we have

10 the travel card on that?

11 MR. TUBBS: We don't on this one, I don't

12 believe.

13 MR. STOLLER: Now, this one we compared to

14 the original data. Now, the repair station we're

15 repairing Continental cylinders, so we measure every

16 Continental cylinder that comes into the repair station

17 to ensure that we have proper interference when we

18 reassemble it.

19 MR. PRIESTER: And the interference fit for

20 this one was unchanged from the time of manufacture

21 after operation?

22 MR. STOLLER: Correct.

23 MR. PRIESTER: It was identical?

24 MR. STOLLER: Minimally different.

25 MR. PRIESTER: So -- okay.
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1 MR. GARVENS: And theoretically, if

2 anything happened, you would lose, you know, you would

3 have expected it to have lost some interference.

4 MR. TUBBS: Right.

5 MR. GILLESPIE: To have grown rather

6 than --

7 MR. GARVENS: Right.

8 MR. GILLESPIE: It's not going to shrink.

9 MR. GARVENS: Right.

10 MR. GILLESPIE: And there's no other

11 geometric differences in this head than in a standard

12 head produced per the drawing.

13 MR. TUBBS: No. No. Now, this cylinder by

14 part number and serial number I believe is a part of

15 the FAA database related to head-barrel separations, so

16 this was one of those that we pulled out of that group

17 so you should find this on your database.

18 MR. THOMPSON: Now, what serial numbers are

19 these? Are they all across the range or are they

20 lumped closer together for these three failures?

21 MR. TUBBS: I'm going to have to get back

22 with you on that. I don't know. I'm sorry.

23 MR. THOMPSON: Can you look at the serial

24 number on that one?

25 MR. STOLLER: 19000.
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1 MR. THOMPSON: 19000.

2 MR. GARVENS: Anybody want to hold it?

3 It's greasy.

4 MR. TUBBS: It's a little -- it's a little

5 dirty, but --

6 MR. GARVENS: I'm just trying to get it off

7 of my desk.

8 MR. TUBBS: All right. Just to give you a

9 little bit of an overview of the changes that we have

10 made in our continuous improvement program since we

11 obtained our FAA approvals back in -- and we started

12 producing them with the -- under the TITAN brand which

13 were the Oberdorfer castings, and in the FAA database

14 there were four of those cylinders that were prior to

15 7708, which means that those were subject to our

16 Mandatory Service Bulletin 04-1 which was removal of

17 those.

18 And then MSB 06-2 started -- the 7708 was

19 in early January 2003. We -- of the cylinders made in

20 2003, we had three of those that failed. I don't

21 remember exactly which the failure types were. I

22 believe, though, that one or two of those were the top

23 of the dome where it -- where it failed at the barrel

24 stop at the top of the barrel, which was corrected with

25 the fillet change in 2004.
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1 And then 2004 was the bad year. 18

2 cylinders made in 2004 failed. And then six of the

3 cylinders in 2003 and 2004 were at the dome radius, not

4 at the threads.

5 Now, of the cylinders that we are talking

6 about here, that includes all modes of failure, not

7 just the -- not just the fatigue.

8 In January of 2005, and actually

9 transitioning to that in December of 2004, we

10 transitioned to a new manufacturing facility, which I

11 will show you something on in a few minutes, and -- but

12 there were only two failures, two cylinders made in

13 2005 that have failed, and both of them were decoupled,

14 in effect. So that very -- there right there, 19000

15 serial number, that's probably one of those.

16 The end of MSB 06-2, there were -- 18 of

17 the failed cylinders would have been right in at prior

18 to that time frame.

19 We increased the exhaust wall and dome

20 fillets in early 2006. I think, Pete, if you recall we

21 had quite a number of meetings and things on that. So

22 we increased that wall thickness at that time.

23 And we have all of the assembly data

24 in-house today from cylinders made from serial number

25 32884 forward, so we have -- we have the assembly
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1 parameters for all of the cylinders back to that time

2 frame.

3 And, let's see, the next major thing that

4 we did was the Allison seat that was introduced in

5 early of two -- early 2008, and that doesn't seem like

6 a big change but it actually is a fairly significant

7 change because the Allison style seat has almost an

8 eighth of an inch added material to the boss. It's got

9 a thin section that's the interference fit area, and in

10 the critical area it adds quite a bit of material.

11 And then we increased the interference

12 again, interference fits, in October of 2009. I think

13 the drawing change was dated quite a bit earlier than

14 that, but then the change was approved and we started

15 implementing it in October of 2009.

16 Back a little bit of the history. The AEC

17 cylinders were designed from Continental cylinders,

18 they were reverse engineered, and we did that by taking

19 the cylinders and sec -- the older cylinders and

20 sectioning them and using the cross-sections to

21 generate our cross-sections in the data.

22 During our certification program, one of

23 the issues, one of the things that we are required to

24 do is to provide a field history assessment, and at

25 that time we acknowledged, we related that there were
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1 head-barrel separations and we were going to address

2 that as much as we could by changing the heat treat to

3 go to a -- the pure AMS 4220 configuration.

4 At that time, and again I don't have this

5 documented, but anecdotally the OEM cylinders were

6 being produced from the A242 T55 heat treat condition,

7 which was as cast and then aged to bring them to the

8 T55. We knew that the OEM was changing to the T75

9 condition at about that time, and of course one of the

10 reasons we know, we were using the same vendors. So we

11 all went to the T75 condition, which is better from

12 ductility and also from yield and tensile properties.

13 MR. PRIESTER: Jimmy, you said that you

14 reverse engineered them by cutting them up and doing

15 that. Did you also reverse engineer the interference

16 fit from the TCM cylinders?

17 MR. TUBBS: Actually, a lot of that work

18 had been done a long time before, Jurgen. The barrels

19 for those cylinders were approved as a PMA part for a

20 re-barrelling process by the Airmotive Engineering

21 Corporation prior to the time that Engine Components

22 bought them. They actually had those approvals back in

23 the '70s.

24 MR. PRIESTER: For the barrel?

25 MR. TUBBS: For the barrels. And the
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1 assembly. So we had all of their engineering data from

2 that time frame.

3 MR. PRIESTER: AEC data.

4 MR. TUBBS: The AEC data.

5 MR. PRIESTER: Well, but my question was,

6 when you redesigned the cylinders, did you also

7 redesign the interference fit from the OEM?

8 MR. TUBBS: No. We did not. We did not

9 change it from the approvals that we had, but we

10 augmented that by -- in the time frame of in the 1980s,

11 we -- we measured more than a thousand Continental

12 cylinders that we disassembled and measured the seal

13 bands and threads to determine the interference, and we

14 have that data and plotted that data. And so that

15 played a part in our --

16 MR. MAGUIRE: Jimmy, excuse me.

17 MR. TUBBS: Yes, sir.

18 MR. MAGUIRE: Would you repeat that,

19 please?

20 MR. TUBBS: Sure.

21 During the 1980s time frame we were

22 manufacturing new cylinder barrels and we were also

23 overhauling cylinders by disassembling them, and a part

24 of that was to measure the seal band and the threads on

25 both the head and the barrel at the disassembly process
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1 and record that data. And so we -- we did that and we

2 still have that data today.

3 MR. HAKALA: Now, was that when the company

4 was in Dallas, was it Airmotive Engineering?

5 MR. TUBBS: Airmotive Engineering was in

6 Directors Row in Dallas until 1982 or '81 or '82 time

7 frame, and but they had the FAA approval. But then

8 when we bought the company and brought it to San

9 Antonio, then we were disassembling the cylinders for

10 new barrels and we were measuring each and every one

11 that we took apart, and we did record that data.

12 Now, quite frankly, they had a lower

13 interference bit than our design tolerances.

14 MR. PRIESTER: What was the -- what was the

15 interference fit that you determined them to have?

16 Ballpark.

17 MR. TUBBS: Ballpark.

18 MR. PRIESTER: Yeah.

19 MR. TUBBS: 5-thousandths on the seal band

20 and zero to 3-thousandths on the thread.

21 MR. PRIESTER: .005.

22 MR. TUBBS: And it varies. But I've got

23 that data plotted.

24 MR. GARVENS: This is on the low end.

25 MR. TUBBS: I haven't looked at it in
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1 several years. But I think it's interesting -- by the

2 way I provided this data to the chief engineer from

3 Continental Motors and -- and I am aware of changes

4 that they made in their processing at that time.

5 MR. PRIESTER: And these cylinders were

6 from what vintage?

7 MR. TUBBS: Oh, they were the cylinders

8 from the start of the 520 engines until -- up until

9 the '80s.

10 MR. PRIESTER: So from when to when? When

11 did they -- '70s, or is it before? When did they --

12 MR. TUBBS: I think the -- the 520 was

13 probably certificated in the early '60s, but I can't

14 be -- I'm just guessing. I shouldn't -- I shouldn't

15 say.

16 MR. PRIESTER: Okay. But maybe '60s

17 to '80s.

18 MR. TUBBS: Yes.

19 So any of this information is available if

20 anybody wants to look at it.

21 Again, just reiterating that the Service

22 Difficulty Reports which have been verified, we've had

23 a team of people going through the FAA Service

24 Difficulty Reports and if there was anything that was

25 questionable they took it out. Actually we had -- we
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1 had two different numbers of separations -- three

2 different numbers. We first thought they were about

3 2,000, but we -- in reviewing them we couldn't be

4 certain so we brought that down to 1700, I believe.

5 But the final number, which has been verified, are

6 around 1240 of those cylinders.

7 MR. PRIESTER: Jimmy, I'm sorry, one more

8 question on this before you leave it.

9 You're saying that you got your first

10 initial approval for this around '98 and went into --

11 MR. TUBBS: Yes.

12 MR. PRIESTER: -- production in '99. And

13 you said that the data on the seal bands for the TCM

14 was between the '60s and the '80s. There's about --

15 about a decade in between there. In 1998, I think you

16 -- I just wanted to make sure. You said you used

17 whatever was already there from the barrel stuff that

18 had been going on since the '70s by AEC, but in 1998

19 did you, when you certified -- the ECI cylinders were

20 initially PMA'd, did you go back and re-do any of

21 the -- take a, at that time what would have been a

22 current model TCM cylinder, cut it up and see if the

23 data that you initially had used from the '70s was

24 still valid?

25 MR. TUBBS: I ... oh.
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1 MR. NASH: Excuse me, Jimmy.

2 MR. PRIESTER: Or did you rely on the --

3 MR. TUBBS: I just can't remember. I can't

4 remember, to tell you the truth.

5 MR. STOLLER: Do you remember Bob

6 Carlton --

7 MR. TUBBS: Yeah, I --

8 MR. STOLLER: -- who was cutting apart the

9 cylinders?

10 MR. TUBBS: Yeah, he was cutting the

11 cylinders but what I don't know is the vintage because

12 we were -- we had two different ways of sectioning them

13 where we would section them, you know, take -- put them

14 on a machining center and cut horizontal slices down

15 parallel to the fins, and then later we started doing

16 it the other way around.

17 MR. PRIESTER: I was just trying to see

18 what you used as baseline, what TCM designed and used

19 as a baseline.

20 MR. TUBBS: The orig -- the cylinders that

21 we used at that time frame, regardless of the -- of the

22 year, I know that they were the cylinders that had the

23 thinner areas around the exhaust ports, a much higher

24 waisted area around the exhaust ports and also around

25 the intake ports and the -- and the spark plug
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1 bosses -- I mean, the injector bosses were recessed

2 fairly far back without any beef around them. So that

3 was the generation of the cylinder that we used, but I

4 think that was fairly current in that time -- in that

5 frame.

6 MR. GARVENS: But also what we are going to

7 see in this presentation is that we have done a lot of

8 further testing and this testing validates that the

9 design that was used in the original design is adequate

10 and airworthy and it works great as long as the engine

11 is operated within its design limits. So we've learned

12 more since then and it all validates what we did at the

13 beginning.

14 MR. TUBBS: In addition, during that time

15 frame in 1997 and '98 we were just getting the initial

16 part of the AC33.19-1. That was just coming out. And

17 so there was a lot of discussion. We wrote issue

18 papers back and forth about whether we needed to do

19 durability testing in addition to the -- to the part

20 33.49 testing. And after a lot of discussion, we did

21 decide that the better part of valor was to do that

22 testing and so the certification testing actually does

23 include a durability test that was very similar.

24 33.19-1 had not been published but we had draft copies,

25 and so we actually did the durability testing also, in
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1 addition to the endurance test.

2 MR. PRIESTER: So the initial ECI PMA

3 design was run through the 400 --

4 MR. TUBBS: Absolutely.

5 MR. PRIESTER: -- 400 hours?

6 MR. TUBBS: Yes. I'm sorry, I --

7 MR. MAGUIRE: No, no. I'm having trouble

8 finding the chart you showed before this that shows

9 manufacturing vintages and the failures associated with

10 those vintages.

11 MR. STOLLER: It's page 10, I believe of

12 the presentation, if yours are numbered.

13 MR. GARVENS: In tab 14?

14 MR. STOLLER: No.

15 MR. GARVENS: Oh. Do you mean the graph or

16 the chart that was hard to read?

17 MR. TUBBS: Oh, I keep trying to --

18 MR. MAGUIRE: That was hard to read.

19 MR. GARVENS: I'll see if I can find it.

20 MR. TUBBS: No, no, it's the one -- it's

21 the timeline.

22 MR. GARVENS: It's the sideways.

23 MR. TUBBS: And I -- it should be in there.

24 MR. GARVENS: You know what that's in,

25 that's in the presentation that you gave in November --
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1 MR. TUBBS: Right. Right.

2 MR. GARVENS: -- to the NTSB.

3 MR. TUBBS: That is correct.

4 MR. GARVENS: I'm not sure if that's in

5 there.

6 MR. TUBBS: I don't know, but I will give

7 you a copy of the presentation that we have with that

8 data in so it you can see it, and then if we need to go

9 back to it to review it and go to any of that, we

10 certainly would like to provide that clarification.

11 MR. GARVENS: Do you want to look at it

12 some more?

13 MR. MAGUIRE: No.

14 MR. GARVENS: See it more closely.

15 MR. TUBBS: Yes, it's a little hard to see.

16 And again, this is just showing you again

17 the same thing we did. So we -- so we've looked at

18 that one.

19 MR. GARVENS: There is a, I think on tab 16

20 there is a table of manufacturing changes in your

21 binder, and in tab 14 it has the tabulation of the

22 head-barrel separations that have driven this

23 discussion.

24 So, Wayne, on tab 15 is a table of the

25 manufacturing changes, the one just past that. That's
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1 -- you just had it.

2 MR. MAGUIRE: Yeah.

3 MR. GARVENS: Okay. And then in tab 14 it

4 has the failures. So that graph was kind of a

5 compilation of those two pieces of information.

6 MR. SHARON: In tab 15, that list of barrel

7 separations, which -- the cylinder you had up there

8 where it came apart, which one of those failures is

9 identified on there?

10 MR. TUBBS: I think I can point it out to

11 you if it's in there.

12 MR. GARVENS: Well, I think they were

13 removed from that list.

14 MR. DENTON: That is correct.

15 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Yeah. It shouldn't

16 be in there, right?

17 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: But it's in the

18 master list.

19 MR. GARVENS: It's then not in this list.

20 MR. DENTON: It is not in this list.

21 MR. MAGUIRE: Not in this list?

22 MR. DENTON: No.

23 MR. GARVENS: Right, because you -- it's

24 all the head-barrel --

25 MR. TUBBS: Okay, because there were a
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1 couple of those that I think we agreed to not put in

2 the list --

3 MR. GARVENS: Because there was no cracking

4 failure.

5 MR. THOMPSON: Again, between them, because

6 it was a different mode of failure.

7 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: So those three

8 aren't really any of the ones that we have been talking

9 about.

10 MR. DENTON: That is correct.

11 MR. STOLLER: They were in the beginning

12 list that's been pared down.

13 MR. TUBBS: None of these are slipoffs.

14 These are just either ridge or --

15 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Okay.

16 MR. SHARON: When did y'all get these, or

17 when did you know about the three that actually came

18 apart due to the temp or whatever reason?

19 MR. TUBBS: We've seen that over the years

20 occasionally.

21 MR. SHARON: I mean, but you've had it for

22 a while, right?

23 MR. TUBBS: Yes. Oh yes.

24 MR. SHARON: In other words --

25 MR. TUBBS: Oh yes.
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1 MR. PRIESTER: So you think there's

2 actually more than three over the years?

3 MR. TUBBS: Probably so. I think, Pete,

4 you and I have looked at a couple of these before.

5 MR. HAKALA: Well, I think last summer we

6 talked about one that -- that appeared to --

7 MR. STOLLER: When you -- when you had the

8 starting list --

9 MR. TUBBS: Yeah.

10 MR. STOLLER: -- that we've pared down by

11 removing things that might have been a repaired

12 cylinder or a Continental cylinder, it was on the

13 original list that we started with. So it has been

14 on --

15 MR. HAKALA: Well, we looked at the

16 failures for 2012 and that was on it, but it didn't

17 jibe with --

18 MR. TUBBS: It wasn't a --

19 MR. HAKALA: It wasn't a red --

20 MR. TUBBS: It wasn't a fracture, it wasn't

21 a fatigue failure.

22 MR. HAKALA: Yeah, so I think we added two

23 that were actually head separations --

24 MR. TUBBS: Right.

25 MR. HAKALA: -- at the thread.
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1 MR. TUBBS: Right.

2 MR. HAKALA: But we were aware of that, but

3 we just set that one aside because --

4 MR. STOLLER: And took it off the list.

5 MR. TUBBS: Right.

6 MR. HAKALA: It was kind of an oddball.

7 MR. TUBBS: It's an oddball, right. But it

8 is illustrative of situations that do happen out there

9 that we have to work with.

10 MR. GILLESPIE: And it's an indication that

11 temperatures are going far in excess of what the design

12 parameters were.

13 MR. TUBBS: Right. Exactly.

14 MR. VICKERS: On that failure, was that

15 just in one of those cylinders, or did any of the other

16 cylinders have any problems?

17 MR. TUBBS: This slip off?

18 MR. VICKERS: Yes.

19 MR. TUBBS: Bill, I just don't recall.

20 I've looked at the cylinders but, as I'm thinking, I've

21 looked at so many cylinders I hate to go back and lead

22 you wrong.

23 MR. GARVENS: But, Jimmy, might you also

24 answer the question that the variation in temperature

25 between cylinders can be --
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1 MR. TUBBS: Oh yeah.

2 MR. GARVENS: -- what?

3 MR. TUBBS: Getting --

4 MR. GARVENS: How large?

5 MR. DENTON: Hundred --

6 MR. TUBBS: It can be a bunch. We see it

7 even on new -- new --

8 MR. DENTON: Fifty to a hundred.

9 MR. TUBBS: -- certificated airplanes,

10 we've seen well over a hundred degrees CHD difference.

11 MR. GARVENS: Which is one of our

12 contentions that, you know, single probe measurements

13 on one cylinder --

14 MR. GILLESPIE: Is not a --

15 MR. GARVENS: -- is not a good indication

16 of anything that's going on in the engine. And if

17 you --

18 MR. VICKERS: Were those other cylinders

19 kept in service, or were they -- was the whole set

20 replaced?

21 MR. STOLLER: Don't know. Have to go back

22 to the --

23 MR. VICKERS: I mean, to me that would

24 be --

25 MR. TUBBS: I can answer those questions
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1 but I don't have the data with me.

2 MR. VICKERS: To me, that would be a big

3 alarm bell as they get these others out of that --

4 MR. TUBBS: Oh, absolutely. Every -- we --

5 MR. VICKERS: If you suspected it over

6 years.

7 MR. TUBBS: And quite frankly, Bill, we've

8 had some of these same cylinders come off of the same

9 airplane, two head-barrel separations off the same

10 airplane. And when you have that out of -- 40 total

11 out of 27,000 cylinders, that tells you something.

12 MR. GILLESPIE: That was not at the same

13 time, though. Right?

14 MR. TUBBS: No, they were -- in fact --

15 MR. GILLESPIE: Separate --

16 MR. TUBBS: In fact, in one case I believe

17 we have one that the re -- the cylinder that had

18 replaced the one that had the head-barrel separation

19 also had one. Or --

20 MR. GARVENS: And I think you repeat your

21 comment that hindsight --

22 MR. TUBBS: Oh yeah.

23 MR. GARVENS: What's very clear today was

24 not as clear yesterday.

25 MR. TUBBS: That's right.
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1 MR. GILLESPIE: But it seems more

2 indicative of the engine and the engine temperature and

3 the way it's being run rather than the cylinder itself,

4 because that engine had another head blow off.

5 MR. TUBBS: That's right.

6 MR. GILLESPIE: And that head had to be a

7 newer head from a different series. It was not the

8 same --

9 MR. TUBBS: That's right. You're exactly

10 right.

11 I've got to go back in history. We had a

12 meeting at San Antonio back in 2006 and Clint had hair

13 then.

14 MR. CROOKSHANKS: No, I didn't.

15 MR. TUBBS: It was longer I thought.

16 MR. CROOKSHANKS: I don't think so.

17 MR. TUBBS: And Derek and Clint

18 participated in that meeting with Pete and, let's see,

19 we had Mark Rimasen and quite a number of people and we

20 were -- it was kind of a wide-ranging assessment. We

21 were looking especially at some cracks around the

22 exhaust ports and we were looking at several issues,

23 but the head-barrel separation was also a major part of

24 that discussion that we had at the time. And we were

25 not able to identify the root cause for the head-barrel
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1 separations at that time. We could only make

2 suppositions.

3 And one of the guys, and I don't know, one

4 of these three guys here made the observation that we

5 really needed to develop something, a lab-type test to

6 help us identify the root cause, that there was a way

7 to do that if we were clever about it, that would help

8 us to do that. And, yeah, it was -- I know it was you,

9 Derek. It was. So -- because Derek is a big proponent

10 of testing. And so we looked at that and said yes, we

11 think it can be -- we talked about it and we had a guy

12 in our office, Bob Carlton said, "I can do that," and

13 after a lot of discussions he was given a budget to go

14 ahead and conduct that.

15 And this is the test facility that we

16 developed back in 2006 and ran a lot of fatigue tests

17 during that time.

18 What happens is that it loads it

19 hydraulically and then cycles the loading from about a

20 zero or a little bit more than zero to up to 1100 psi

21 at 10 Hertz and it's in an oven because we ran some

22 tests and we had looked at the temperatures in some

23 Lycoming cylinders. So we said, well, 375 degrees

24 should do the job. So that oven then closes up and we

25 start cycling and it measures the data, we've got plots
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1 and everything of the cycling and we are able to run it

2 night and day at 10 Hertz, and we got a lot of failures

3 for the Lycoming cylinders. We were able to fail new

4 Lycoming cylinders, our cylinders and other people's

5 cylinders and we got a lot of information on that. And

6 then we used that to increase the interference fits,

7 and after we increased the interference fits on the

8 Lycoming cylinders, we got a minimum of an eight-fold

9 increase to the fatigue life that we could achieve on

10 those cylinders in the test rig.

11 The failures were identical to the failures

12 we get out in the field. Well, not always, because we

13 were having a lot of problems with the barrels breaking

14 at the flanges and we broke a lot of fixtures in the

15 fatigue rig sometimes before we broke the cylinders.

16 But we did get enough data to identify the root cause

17 for the Lycoming cylinders to make a correction, which

18 we implemented in early 2008.

19 On the Continentals, it was not conclusive.

20 We did break a couple of cylinders. We broke an OEM

21 cylinder but it didn't break in the traditional manner,

22 and we did break someone else's cylinder and with

23 the -- in the traditional manner. But we were not able

24 to cause fatigue failures in any of our cylinders. And

25 in hindsight now we know that the reason is we just
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1 weren't getting the oven hot enough. In the future, we

2 can go back and do this now, but we're going to have to

3 use aero hydraulic because the hydraulic oil just will

4 not stand up to the temperatures of doing that testing.

5 We ended up with one little minor flash fire, and so we

6 can't go any higher temperature with the current

7 design.

8 MR. MAGUIRE: Jimmy, excuse me.

9 MR. TUBBS: Yes.

10 MR. MAGUIRE: Would you expand on your test

11 temperatures as compared to the temperatures that the

12 cylinders would see in flight operation?

13 MR. TUBBS: In some earlier tests that we

14 had done on Lycoming engines, when the -- when the

15 cylinders got around -- cylinder head temperature with

16 a probe around 475 degrees, we were seeing about 360 to

17 380 degrees at the seal bed, which was the critical

18 area that we were looking at. So that's why we set the

19 temperatures in this oven at 375.

20 We've got much better data today. And to

21 go back and do it all over again, we know that we were

22 significantly below the temperatures that we need to be

23 at to introduce failures.

24 MR. MAGUIRE: Lycoming aside, expand on the

25 temperature relationship between what you were testing
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1 on the Continentals versus their in-flight operations.

2 MR. TUBBS: In the in-flight operations --

3 and I'm going to show you some pictures of seal band

4 temperatures versus CHT here in just a little bit that

5 will show you that when the cylinder is at 460 degrees

6 what the temperatures can be at the seal band and in

7 the threads, which is the critical area that we are

8 having to deal with.

9 So the CHT probe is a little above the

10 barrel and it's back behind. And, by the way, there's

11 a lot of variation in CHT problems.

12 MR. GARVENS: Do we have the cut barrel?

13 MR. TUBBS: Yeah. I don't -- we should

14 have. But some CHT probes go all the way in and touch

15 with a spring behind holding them against the aluminum

16 and others are in the free air, and we are finding some

17 differences there, too.

18 MR. HAKALA: Jimmy, when you had a failure,

19 it was a head separation in this rig?

20 MR. TUBBS: We had one head separation in

21 this rig for Continental cylinders.

22 MR. HAKALA: But, I mean, with the -- in

23 the Lycomings.

24 MR. TUBBS: Oh, in the Lycomings, we had --

25 we -- yeah. Head-barrel separations, we got a number
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1 of those.

2 MR. HAKALA: But it was at the first

3 thread?

4 MR. TUBBS: At the first loaded thread,

5 yes.

6 MR. HAKALA: Okay.

7 MR. TUBBS: And but with that minor

8 interference fit change -- and you have to remember

9 that the Lycoming cylinder head barrel interface is

10 similar but different. And it's different in some

11 important ways because the Continental cylinder abuts

12 at the top of the barrel and you torque it so that you

13 put a preload in the threads. On the Lycomings, you

14 abut at the bottom and it also puts a preload on the

15 threads. But that preload on the threads increases

16 with temperature; with Continental, it diminishes with

17 temperature. So all of those things have to be looked

18 at.

19 So we decided that we needed to do some

20 engine testing, that we just couldn't use the test rig

21 and achieve what we needed to.

22 MR. GARVENS: We think it gets a little bit

23 more technical, and now is a good time to take a break

24 just for 10 minutes so you will be fresh when data

25 storms come in.
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1 MR. THOMPSON: I don't disagree.

2 MS. COX: Okay.

3 MR. PRIESTER: Okay.

4 MR. TUBBS: Thank you.

5 MR. GARVENS: Back at 10:35?

6 (Break from 10:20 a.m. until 10:38 a.m.)

7 MR. DENTON: Ready to resume?

8 MR. SHARON: If it's all right, what we

9 will do is probably break about 12 o'clock for lunch.

10 We've got a cafeteria downstairs depending on what we

11 decide to do; if we want to keep it short, then I'd

12 recommend the cafeteria. And if we want to take an

13 hour break, you might have time to go out. But let's

14 plan around 12 o'clock if that's all right.

15 MR. TUBBS: All right.

16 Okay. We proposed engine testing to

17 identify the root cause of the head-barrel separations

18 and I am talking about the root cause for the fatigue

19 failure in the top loaded thread of the head. And we

20 made this proposal to the FAA in late 2010, again in

21 early 2011. We developed a test program plan, which we

22 did brief the FAA on in June of 2011. Don Kenton was

23 working with us on that at that time frame and that was

24 a part of his presentation also. We conducted the

25 instrumentation, the engine building and testing.
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1 Actually, the testing started in December 2011. The

2 instrumentation started quite a bit before that because

3 it turns out that's not an easy thing to do. We had to

4 try to devise a way to get the strain gauges, fine

5 strain gauges that we thought we could -- that would

6 stand up to it and to get somebody that knew how to do

7 that kind of work.

8 MR. SHARON: Jimmy, are you back on a

9 different tab now?

10 MR. TUBBS: Yes, it's not in your ...

11 So we conducted the engine tests in the

12 late 2011 and early 2012. And this is the engine in

13 our test cell. Behind the prop you can see the torque

14 meter system. We actually had the engine instrumented

15 for cylinder pressures and measuring torque, but it

16 turned out we were limited on the number of channels

17 that we could operate and so we had to drop the

18 cylinder pressures and the torque readings at the time

19 to be able to do it because we didn't think that that

20 was going to materially affect us. We had run pressure

21 tests, cylinder pressure tests on this engine so we got

22 the pressure data to work from.

23 Next one.

24 The thermocouples were put in just above

25 the top loaded thread and they just milled a tiny
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1 little cavity. Now, it looks like a big cavity there

2 but that's really fairly small. These are WK type

3 micro-measurements strain gauges that are good up until

4 about 500 degrees Farenheit and it's M-Bond 610.

5 MR. DENTON: The strain gauges are good up

6 to about six -- 700, the adhesive.

7 MR. TUBBS: Right. The bonding is the

8 thing that limits the temperature you can operate with.

9 And then on the outside you can see where the strain

10 gauge wires come through, there is a hole drilled above

11 and below the strain gauge that goes into about, oh, a

12 16th of an inch of the seal band in the threads and

13 there we potted K Type thermocouples so that we could

14 see the temperatures above and below each one of the

15 strain gauges. Now, we did this both on the intake and

16 the exhaust sides. And most of the strain gauges

17 survived the earlier tests with one -- I think one

18 dropout, maybe two. In later testing, we did lose a

19 couple of more primarily on the exhaust side. But we

20 got enough data between the intake and the exhaust side

21 that we were able to scale from the intake readings

22 what we were going to see on the exhaust side.

23 We wanted to span the production parameters

24 for the cylinders, so what we did is we decided to keep

25 the thread interference a constant 12-thousandths for
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1 the first six cylinders and then vary the seal band

2 interference from 8-thousandths through 18-thousandths.

3 Now, the number 5 glaze cylinder, I want to

4 talk about that a little bit later on also and how we

5 achieved that, and that one came up then with a 17 seal

6 band and an 18 -- I mean a 16-thousandths thread

7 interference.

8 MR. PRIESTER: Now, Jimmy, you selected

9 double-08 as your starting point but your initial

10 design allowed for a double-07. I'm just curious --

11 MR. TUBBS: But that was not for any of the

12 TITANS. That was way back in the range. So all of the

13 TITANS that I'm aware of we were running double-09 as

14 the minimum, and 9 to -- what was -- 9 to 12.

15 MR. DENTON: 9 to 14.

16 MR. TUBBS: And I think now they're -- it

17 was 7 to 12 for a period of time and it was 9 to 12 or

18 9 to 14.

19 MR. DENTON: 9 to 14.

20 MR. TUBBS: But we picked the 8-thousandths

21 as the low end of that.

22 MR. THOMPSON: The chart you have on tab 16

23 indicates that it happened around serial number 25,000

24 in 2005 that you went from the 7-thousandths to the

25 9-thousandths.
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1 MR. TUBBS: Is that right? Okay.

2 MR. PRIESTER: That's why I was saying I'm

3 curious why you didn't pick the orig dimen design, you

4 picked somewhat larger than what would have been

5 allowed by the drawing.

6 MR. TUBBS: In all probability I looked at

7 the current drawings and said I want to bridge that,

8 the drawing that was in the time frame of the 2005-6.

9 MR. GILLESPIE: For the current drawing you

10 are going --

11 MR. TUBBS: Right.

12 MR. GILLESPIE: -- beyond what the

13 tolerance --

14 MR. TUBBS: Right.

15 MR. GILLESPIE: -- of the drawing would

16 allow.

17 MR. TUBBS: Well, it -- through the -- and

18 up until the last, until the change where we went up to

19 a higher interference level.

20 MR. PRIESTER: Okay, so none of the data

21 that you are presenting --

22 MR. TUBBS: Is 7-thousandths.

23 MR. PRIESTER: -- you are trying to apply

24 it to --

25 MR. TUBBS: 7-thousandths.
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1 MR. PRIESTER: -- below serial numbers

2 25,000 and below?

3 MR. TUBBS: No. No. And we're going to --

4 MR. GARVENS: You can extrapolate.

5 MR. TUBBS: You can extrapolate, but we are

6 going to go into what we recommend for that.

7 Next one there.

8 This is just a -- these are trend lines off

9 of the data because, as you can imagine, the lines,

10 they jump around just a little bit, but these are the

11 trend lines that are very consistent in all of the

12 cylinders and you can see that we are running a

13 microstrain from around 220 to 320, and for cylinder

14 number 1 it would be up to around 420. Cylinder number

15 1 was the low interference fit cylinder and it also had

16 some other issues as we will discuss. But this is the

17 way the data looks for all of those cylinders. So the

18 strain levels are running at around 220 to 320 on these

19 three cylinders until you hit about 460 and then there

20 is an inflexion and then the stresses go up.

21 Now, to look at the stress that you would

22 see at that area just right above the threads, you can

23 just multiply that by 10 or 10.3 depending on the

24 modulus that you want to use. Typically we use 10

25 million as the Young's modulus for aluminum. But there
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1 is some indication that 10.3, and there's, you know,

2 there's different schools of thought of which one you

3 should use. So that would be reading from 220 ksi to

4 320 ksi down in the areas below CHT limit.

5 MR. GILLESPIE: You mean 22 ksi.

6 MR. TUBBS: Right.

7 MR. GILLESPIE: So it would be 22 ksi.

8 MR. TUBBS: Right. I'm sorry.

9 MR. THOMPSON: What's the normal operating

10 temperature on the Continental?

11 MR. TUBBS: 460.

12 MR. DENTON: That's the limit.

13 MR. STOLLER: That's the normal limit.

14 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: That's the limit.

15 MR. TUBBS: That's the normal limit. All

16 right. One of the things that we had noticed in all of

17 the cylinders that we have looked at is that they all

18 seem to have a glazed cylinder barrel and those that we

19 got the pistons on, when we looked at the pistons, you

20 look at the insides of the pistons and they show

21 indications of high blow-by and so we just felt we

22 needed to test with high blow-by.

23 And, Wayne, I believe we did this from the

24 last time we presented to you at the Directorate, we

25 conducted some more tests that came up with this data.
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1 We started off with taking the number 5

2 cylinder off - it's the easiest one to get off of the

3 engine - and took the piston rings and took a

4 three-cornered file and ground on the edges of the

5 rings to try to score them enough to create a high

6 blow-by condition and put them back in the engine, and

7 we did that twice.

8 The next slide there.

9 I thought I had -- it's in the engineering

10 report, not the -- not the presentation. I have

11 pictures of the rings that we scored. And so we tried

12 it twice and I scored them some more and it didn't

13 work. So then we went back and found a cylinder that

14 had been returned with extremely high blow-by with the

15 piston that was black on the inside and the rings

16 showed the evidence of blow-by, which usually results

17 in a little sharp edge on the bottoms of the piston

18 rings. So we took that cylinder barrel, took it off --

19 MR. GARVENS: I think it's on page 20 in

20 that report in tab 22. Is that the picture?

21 MR. TUBBS: Right. Exactly. And we took

22 the barrel off and then we had one more strain gauged

23 cylinder head and we measured them up and they worked

24 out to a 17-thousandths seal band interference and a

25 16-thousandths thread interference and we thought,
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1 okay, the cylinder it was replacing was a

2 16-thousandths seal band interference. So we thought

3 that was a good match, so we assembled that cylinder

4 with strain gauges and thermocouples and put it back on

5 the engine and ran it and we got markedly higher

6 stresses in that cylinder when it went past the 460

7 degree line. So the stresses seemed to go up higher

8 for cylinders that are experiencing high blow-by.

9 MR. THOMPSON: Can you define for me

10 blow-by and glazing?

11 MR. TUBBS: Okay. All right. Blow-by,

12 when you break a cylinder in, when you start and build

13 an engine, the rings look round but they're not really

14 round. They're close to round, but they're not really

15 round. And they've got a varying amount of stress all

16 the way around them, with the highest bending stress

17 right opposite the gap. And so what you have to do is

18 you have to run that -- you have to fire up the engine

19 and run it and grind the periphery of the ring to match

20 the bore. And until it matches, you've got combustion

21 gases escaping past the periphery of the ring down the

22 combustion chamber. So you've got a race going on to

23 try to grind the ring fast enough to seal up against

24 the bore, and against the bore having oil carbonized

25 and deposited on the bore. And if the carbon deposits
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1 win, you end up with a glazed bore and then, as you

2 continue to run, the hot combustion gases bypassing the

3 periphery of the rings create a very hot area and the

4 rings wear significantly and usually get a little sharp

5 lip on the bottom of the ring face.

6 If they seal up, then the combustion gases

7 that leak by are primarily due to going through the

8 ring gaps and are not -- they're not blowing past the

9 outside edges of the ring.

10 Remember, if you've got a thousand psi

11 pressure in the combustion chamber, you have about a

12 thousand psi pushing that top compression ring out

13 against the cylinder.

14 The second ring has just about a half of

15 that.

16 MR. PRIESTER: So, Jimmy, could you explain

17 for us how you end up with a glazed bore as opposed to

18 a normal break-in?

19 MR. TUBBS: The majority of the time it

20 happens by running the -- it happens out in the field

21 more than any other place, where somebody buys some

22 cylinders and puts them on an engine and then they run

23 them on the ground trying to break them in and --

24 MR. STOLLER: Or option 2 where an engine

25 builder doesn't have a test cell, or ships the engine
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1 without running it, they install it in the airframe and

2 break it in on the ramp.

3 MR. TUBBS: Right. And you can break in

4 cylinders in an airplane but it's a very, very -- it's

5 a task that has to be followed very carefully and we

6 have done it in the years past, we've written service

7 bulletins and even have a manual about it.

8 MR. PRIESTER: Is the manner in which you

9 break in an engine using ECI cylinders any different

10 than the manner in which you would break in cylinders

11 for TCM or Superior?

12 MR. TUBBS: No. And quite frankly, we see

13 a lot of glazed cylinder bores with everybody's

14 cylinders.

15 MR. PRIESTER: Are you getting reports, are

16 people calling in and reporting to you that, "Hey,

17 we've got glazed cylinders," are you getting any

18 reports from customers?

19 MR. TUBBS: We get reports quite often of

20 people that say, "Your cylinders haven't broken in,

21 we're using too much oil," which is another byproduct

22 of a glazed bore.

23 MR. PRIESTER: Are you getting any reports

24 from the field that some guy calls in and says, "Hey,

25 your cylinders tend to run hotter than OEMs"?
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1 MR. TUBBS: We've had a few calls, but we

2 also get people saying they're not running hot enough.

3 So it really varies. It's a mixed bag.

4 MR. GILLESPIE: But there's no evidence

5 that you have that shows yours are different than the

6 OEM?

7 MR. TUBBS: No.

8 MR. GILLESPIE: In other words, it's

9 anecdotal where people would call in?

10 MR. TUBBS: No. If -- we believe that the

11 nickel carbide is a little bit better for break-in, and

12 it -- both steel bores and nickel carbide bores are

13 light years ahead of chrome. And I'll talk about that

14 again in a minute, too. Because the old chrome bores

15 were a real problem.

16 MR. PRIESTER: So your position is that

17 glazed bores is a common problem among all three

18 manufacturers?

19 MR. TUBBS: Oh yes. Sure. But not only

20 that, Jurgen, you can have a perfectly good running

21 engine and be flying it at like in a 421 or a 414 and

22 be flying at 21,000 feet in a pretty cool environment

23 at a pretty high power setting, and if you get a

24 controller to give you a quick descent, it's -- pilots

25 have a tendency to go ahead and acknowledge and pull
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1 the power back. And we've got one case that we've

2 documented fairly recently where it happened and they

3 glazed the bores, it had a hundred hours on it in

4 perfectly good condition, and they glazed the bores in

5 one descent like that.

6 MR. PRIESTER: So how would one make a

7 definitive determination that "I have a glazed bore"?

8 MR. TUBBS: High oil consumption is the

9 easiest way to do it, and looking at the belly of the

10 airplane.

11 MR. CROOKSHANKS: Well, but you can't

12 really tell a glazed bore until you look at the inside

13 of the cylinder.

14 MR. TUBBS: Yes.

15 MR. PRIESTER: That's what I'm asking.

16 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: You can go

17 step-wise.

18 MR. PRIESTER: If you've got a failed

19 cylinder and it's suspected that it failed because it's

20 a glazed bore, what would a metallurgist do to

21 definitively identify yes or no there's a glazed bore?

22 MR. CROOKSHANKS: You have to look at the

23 cylinder wall and then you can do material samples on

24 the cylinder wall if you need to. But the only way you

25 have to take the cylinder off -- it's not going to fail
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1 because of glazing. That's just a product of the

2 break-in period or, you know, like Jimmy says, maybe

3 the descent, you can get a glazed cylinder bore.

4 MR. PRIESTER: Well, yes, but we are

5 attributing glazing to be a fatigue-like detriment. So

6 as a metallurgist --

7 MR. CROOKSHANKS: Not yet.

8 MR. GARVENS: Glazing in combination with

9 typical operation.

10 MR. TUBBS: What we are saying is the

11 testing we did showed higher thread stresses in the

12 cylinder that had glaze. And I want to go back and

13 also say that we always had some higher -- well, from

14 some of the first tests, in the first -- in the phase 2

15 tests we had higher stresses in cylinder number 1 which

16 also had the lower interference. And so in our minds

17 we said, yeah, that tracks; we've got higher stresses

18 in the lower interference cylinder.

19 But when we put this cylinder on for the

20 glazed bore testing, we also bore scope the cylinders

21 - all of them - and we did note that cylinder number 1

22 has got glazing. Now, we have not pulled that cylinder

23 off yet. So it's hard, you know, other than in the

24 bore scope, which we can look at and see and make a

25 judgment that it has glazing.
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1 MR. PRIESTER: So it's a visual.

2 MR. TUBBS: Yeah, it's visual. Now, when

3 you pull the cylinder off it's pretty easy to see

4 because you can look at the piston. The piston is the

5 easiest way. But you also can do a compression check,

6 and typically with glazing you start losing

7 compression.

8 MR. PRIESTER: So for the cylinders that

9 are known failures, have you made a determination in

10 each case that they did or did not have glazing and

11 documented it?

12 MR. TUBBS: All of the cylinders that we

13 have in-house show evidence of glazing. I think we

14 have -- I forget how many of those that we do have.

15 But they do show evidence of glazing.

16 MR. GILLESPIE: Did you bring any with you

17 that you could show them?

18 MR. TUBBS: I don't know that we have a

19 glazed bore here. I do have some photographs of glazed

20 bores here in a few minutes.

21 But, and one other issue is of course is

22 that if the cylinder was put on an airplane and it got

23 a glazed bore and it was burning oil bad and they

24 pulled it off because of that and send it in, that was

25 a very common thing that we've been doing for years,
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1 I've done it myself, for repair. So you fix it, you

2 put it back on and you run the engine. What I don't

3 know is what that first high temperature operation did

4 to the cylinder and that's a new concern that I have

5 coming up.

6 MR. PRIESTER: You say "fix it." Do you

7 remove the glazed condition?

8 MR. TUBBS: You remove the glaze by honing

9 the bore and put in new piston rings. Typically new

10 piston rings and a new piston.

11 MR. PRIESTER: Are you aware of any head

12 separations caused on OEM cylinders due possibly to a

13 glazed condition?

14 MR. TUBBS: Yes, absolutely.

15 MR. CROOKSHANKS: I think you are asking

16 the wrong question. The head separation is not due to

17 a glazed condition. If you look at this plot, you can

18 see that the stress level on a glazed bore for normal

19 operating temperatures is in fact lower with a glazed

20 cylinder.

21 MR. TUBBS: You're right. Exactly.

22 MR. CROOKSHANKS: Okay? It's not until the

23 temperature increases that the stresses increase, and

24 the stress is where we get into starting a fatigue

25 crack.
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1 MR. TUBBS: Right.

2 MR. CROOKSHANKS: Okay.

3 MR. PRIESTER: Let me reword it:

4 Are you aware of any OEM cylinders that

5 have been separated, head separations who also happen

6 to be glazed?

7 MR. TUBBS: Yes.

8 MR. PRIESTER: You -- yes?

9 MR. TUBBS: Yes. Definitely. We have -- I

10 have documentation of that in my computer, in fact.

11 They were cylinders that were overhaul repaired and --

12 and then did -- then fail -- they had glazed bores and

13 they did have head-barrel separation. OEM cylinders.

14 And the reason we have them is because they went

15 through our repair station.

16 MR. VICKERS: Jimmy, can you explain to me

17 the physics behind what's causing that thread stress to

18 go up when it's glazed and then when it's not?

19 MR. TUBBS: Again -- and I've had a lot of

20 discussions with a lot of different people trying to

21 find out why, but we know also that it's pushing oil up

22 above the piston rings and so that is modifying the

23 combustion gasses and there is some possibility that we

24 are getting higher peak pressures because of that.

25 MR. VICKERS: You could measure some of
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1 that, right?

2 MR. TUBBS: We could -- we have not

3 completed -- you know, we have not gotten that far.

4 But yes, what we know now that with the glaze we've got

5 higher stresses. Exactly what is producing those

6 higher stresses, I haven't been able to develop all the

7 data for that.

8 MR. VICKERS: Okay.

9 MR. SHARON: Jimmy, the data you have in

10 your computer on the OEMs, are any of those listed in

11 the SDR?

12 MR. TUBBS: Not in this -- oh, in the SDRs?

13 MR. SHARON: Yes.

14 MR. TUBBS: I don't know. I can tell

15 you --

16 MR. DENTON: They're not --

17 MR. TUBBS: -- that they were

18 involved in --

19 MR. DENTON: They're not specifically --

20 MR. TUBBS: They were involved in incidents

21 and -- and in fact I can think of one Lycoming. And

22 Bill, Bill Vickers actually knows about one of them

23 because he was with us during the accident

24 investigation.

25 MR. SHARON: Can you provide whatever data
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1 you have on that?

2 MR. TUBBS: Sure.

3 MR. SHARON: If you've got OEM failures

4 like that, that would be good to know.

5 MR. TUBBS: Sure. Absolutely. Because

6 there is very little -- there's -- in fact, I've

7 got sev -- now, we have to be careful that -- that --

8 and -- and maybe I need to let --

9 MR. STOLLER: We don't have a barrel.

10 We've got a head if you want to look at a head of an

11 OEM failure.

12 MR. TUBBS: Yeah. We've got an OEM failure

13 here.

14 MR. GILLESPIE: Right now, Jimmy, you see

15 no real difference between OEM and your heads, correct?

16 MR. TUBBS: No, no.

17 MR. GILLESPIE: They're looking --

18 MR. TUBBS: We -- this -- OEM heads fail.

19 Our heads fail and -- and some other production -- you

20 know, there were some other production approval holder

21 heads that failed. And quite frankly, they are all

22 failing for the same reason.

23 MR. GILLESPIE: And I think that is the

24 basis of your -- your position --

25 MR. TUBBS: Right.
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1 MR. GILLESPIE: -- is that --

2 MR. PRIESTER: What is that reason?

3 MR. TUBBS: Overtemperature operation.

4 When it goes over temperature, the stresses, the

5 stresses just move up into that range and you've got

6 to -- you've got to look at the -- at the material

7 properties. I mean, at close to 600 degrees, you've

8 already exceeded your yield points on that AMS -- on

9 that A242 alloy.

10 MR. PRIESTER: So, Jimmy, if we take the --

11 if we take the fleet, there's a very large fleet out

12 there or -- and on a lot, a lot of those airplanes they

13 have digital data that is routinely recorded.

14 MR. TUBBS: Yes.

15 MR. PRIESTER: Do you have any data to

16 substantiate the claim that there's lots of folks out

17 there that are exceeding 460 on a routine basis, or at

18 all?

19 MR. TUBBS: I only have some -- some data.

20 I think that there are some people, though, that do

21 have that data. Two people that can I think of that

22 probably have that data are going to be George Brawley,

23 they probably have that data, and so does Mike Busch

24 with their -- you know, they've got that analysis, I

25 think, where they are doing a lot of that.
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1 MR. PRIESTER: I guess -- why have you not

2 sought to secure that type of data to substantiate the

3 claim that they are in fact running the engines hotter

4 than 460?

5 MR. GARVENS: I think that's part of what

6 we have been trying to achieve is get everybody on

7 board at what the root cause of the problem is, that

8 what every indication that we have tested is, and then

9 for us to work together. That was one of the NTSB's --

10 you know, they were enthusiastic about the ideas that

11 we need data, we need to start going out there and

12 collect this stuff and learn more and more what is

13 causing so many problems in the --

14 MR. PRIESTER: But you overhaul lots of

15 engines and surely know who the purchasers of those

16 engines are. Have you not asked them to provide you

17 data?

18 MR. STOLLER: Can you discuss what

19 equipment is on the aircraft?

20 MR. TUBBS: Yes.

21 MR. GARVENS: And not purposefully it's

22 getting wider.

23 MR. TUBBS: Remember, Jurgen, we produce

24 component parts and they go to distributors who sell

25 those to other people, so we don't always know where
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1 these parts go, where the cylinders go. Now, that will

2 change as we start building cylinders, there's no

3 question about that. And you are asking some questions

4 that I wish I could say I did that. But I -- there's

5 some of these things that I should have done that I

6 haven't done yet.

7 MR. GILLESPIE: One thing you have done,

8 though, is taken engines that would have a temperature

9 provided and found that when you do look at all of the

10 cylinders, the variation is great.

11 MR. TUBBS: Oh, yes.

12 MR. GILLESPIE: So even with data from an

13 engine, you generally are not going to get data that

14 would conclusively show you that all of the cylinders

15 are running at that temperature. So if you get a

16 reading of 460 on one, you very well could have other

17 cylinders running at 560, and he has empirical data to

18 show that.

19 MR. TUBBS: Yes, we have data on that, too.

20 MR. STOLLER: Newer aircraft are more

21 likely to have temperature monitoring on every

22 cylinder. Ours are replacement cylinders, so they

23 would tend to go on older aircraft, not new OEM

24 aircraft as produced.

25 MR. PRIESTER: A lot of your cylinders go
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1 into RAM engines, don't they?

2 MR. TUBBS: Yeah.

3 MR. PRIESTER: And those engines are pretty

4 much new and go into twin Cessnas, which are

5 high-dollar airplanes, right?

6 MR. TUBBS: How do you want to answer that?

7 MR. GARVENS: Our experience --

8 (Unintelligible overspeak)

9 MR. CROOKSHANKS: I think we're getting

10 away from the real problem here.

11 MR. TUBBS: Right. Right.

12 MR. CROOKSHANKS: What we are talking about

13 here is basically our recommendation, which is a set of

14 cylinders by serial number that we know about, and

15 we're getting off into kind of speculation on other

16 manufacturers' cylinders that has nothing to do really

17 with this particular issue that we are talking about.

18 I think we should probably try and continue on this for

19 the root cause of the failures that they have seen,

20 which we issued a recommendation about.

21 MR. TUBBS: And I can talk -- Jurgen, let's

22 talk about this after, because I've got lots of data.

23 We did testing for Continental Motors, for goodness

24 sakes.

25 MR. MAGUIRE: Jimmy, before we leave this,
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1 clarify for me:

2 When you are saying failures are occurring

3 on the Continental cylinders as well as the ECI

4 marketed cylinders, talking about the number of

5 occurrences.

6 MR. TUBBS: Yes. Yes. The number of

7 occurrences. Now, if you looked at the pattern of

8 failures, theirs dropped off over the last few years

9 and then from our production they stopped and now we

10 haven't had a failure in over 18 months either. So,

11 you know, they've all mitigated. And we've made some

12 continuous improvements, as has Continental. But then

13 we have to -- need to go back and take a look, and

14 we're going to -- we're going to make some suggestions

15 where we go from here I think that will address that

16 also.

17 Okay.

18 During our meeting in November, I believe

19 with Michael -- well, I think we all were involved.

20 And it was suggested that we do a finite element

21 analysis, to go ahead and conform that to the testing

22 that we've done to see what kind of stress levels we're

23 getting in the cylinders and see how that correlates,

24 and then it also will provide us a basis to do any type

25 of crack growth studies or anything else that we need
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1 to do. But first thing we wanted to do was to just

2 correlate and see where the stress levels are.

3 To do that, we decided we had to do it and

4 we contacted Don Gillespie with Delta G and we have

5 contracted with Don to produce a finite element stress

6 model to match up and to correlate it to our test data.

7 And it's a work in progress, it's a lot more complex

8 and in a minute we will get a chance for Don to explain

9 exactly what he's doing and how he's doing it. They

10 started off with our 3D model and they've had to make a

11 few corrections and changes to make sure that it

12 matched exactly to the thread profiles and a few

13 things, but they've done all of that, and we set that

14 range of boundary conditions to cover all of the

15 parameters from the lower interference, the high

16 interference, the low temperatures to the high

17 temperature operations and also the cylinder pressures.

18 Now, the first run that we did I think used

19 1,000 psi cylinder pressure and the second run uses 900

20 psi cylinder pressures. The 900 is closer to what we

21 would see with the Continental engines.

22 This is a picture of the model that they

23 just developed and it has all of the features that are

24 critical to the cylinder head at the head-to-barrel

25 interface. And so there is a barrel, and sections of
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1 the barrel and sections of the head.

2 Go ahead.

3 Now, then, before I showed you what the

4 stress levels were measured on the strain gauges, and

5 those were running, you know, from 2 up to as high as

6 6 kips or 6,000 psi, and what we are looking at right

7 here is assuming that the seal band does not provide

8 any benefit to the joint, that it's all the threads.

9 The seal band is slipping.

10 MR. GILLESPIE: Which is what you expect at

11 a high temperature --

12 MR. TUBBS: This is what you'd expect at a

13 high temperature.

14 MR. GILLESPIE: -- when the head is

15 expanded more than the cylinder, there is no longer any

16 friction between the head and the cylinder so all of

17 the load is being taken by the threads.

18 MR. NASH: This is a temperature higher

19 than the assembly temperature?

20 MR. GILLESPIE: No.

21 MR. TUBBS: Actually that could even be

22 room temperature. But what it is, is it would be that

23 way if it was heat -- if it was heated.

24 MR. CROOKSHANKS: Are you putting

25 temperature effects in your model right now?
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1 MR. GILLESPIE: Not in this model.

2 MR. TUBBS: Go ahead.

3 MR. CROOKSHANKS: You are simulating

4 temperature effects by the contact stresses at this

5 event.

6 MR. GILLESPIE: Correct.

7 MR. CROOKSHANKS: Okay.

8 MR. GILLESPIE: And currently, these

9 contact stresses are zero between the head and the

10 cylinder, which --

11 MR. CROOKSHANKS: For the plot or this

12 model.

13 MR. GILLESPIE: For this plot.

14 MR. CROOKSHANKS: Okay.

15 MR. GILLESPIE: Which -- which simulates a

16 high temperature. What temperature, we're not saying

17 yet because we have not introduced that. We looked at

18 the limits, meaning if the head had a very high

19 interference due to the assembly, you're going to --

20 that friction band is going to be pushed up against the

21 cylinder and the head and you're going to get, when

22 the -- when the pressure is built up in your cylinder,

23 it is going to be taken out, a large portion of that,

24 by that friction band without going through your

25 threads.
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1 As that temperature in your head increases,

2 it relieves that pressure against the cylinder. And as

3 you relieve that pressure, more of the threads now have

4 to take the load, which would then explain why, as you

5 increase the temperature even more severely as the head

6 opens up, totally relieves that load, and now starts

7 expanding away from the cylinder to an extreme, you

8 could blow off a head if the threads in the cells were

9 not even engaging any longer, which is what you just

10 showed with that other head.

11 MR. TUBBS: Right. But in this case, you

12 can see that the thread, the stress -- and this is --

13 by the way, this is a von Mises stress, and a von Mises

14 stress is -- is not just the principal stress but it

15 is -- it's a composite --

16 MR. GILLESPIE: It's an energy equation.

17 MR. TUBBS: It's an energy equation.

18 MR. GILLESPIE: So I don't want -- yeah, we

19 just did this as a quick -- as a quick number to come

20 out and show changes in stress level when you have

21 friction and when you don't have friction.

22 MR. TUBBS: Right.

23 MR. GILLESPIE: We are going to be

24 providing more data shortly using both interference,

25 the friction and the temperature change as well as the
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1 pressure, and we will have all those variations

2 included and we are going to be matching their data.

3 MR. TUBBS: Next slide.

4 This is on the other end of the scale.

5 This is a condition where the -- where there is no slip

6 between the seal band of the head and the barrel.

7 MR. GILLESPIE: Does everyone understand

8 what they are looking at right here?

9 MR. CROOKSHANKS: How did you model the no

10 slip? Is it just a boundary condition?

11 MR. GILLESPIE: Yes.

12 MR. CROOKSHANKS: You fixed that boundary?

13 MR. GILLESPIE: Yes, that's correct.

14 MR. DENTON: This is the cross-section of

15 the barrel.

16 MR. GILLESPIE: Actually, actually we

17 didn't fix it. We actually put in -- there is a

18 correspondent in Abacus where we can put in a friction.

19 MR. DENTON: So here is a cross-section.

20 Here's the aluminum head.

21 MR. CROOKSHANKS: But you can say

22 there's -- the friction is zero.

23 MR. GILLESPIE: Is basically infinite.

24 MR. CROOKSHANKS: Or infinite.

25 MR. GILLESPIE: Yes.
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1 MR. CROOKSHANKS: It's infinite here --

2 MR. GILLESPIE: Yes.

3 MR. CROOKSHANKS: -- because you get no

4 slip.

5 MR. GILLESPIE: That's correct.

6 MR. CROOKSHANKS: Okay.

7 MR. DENTON: Here are the threads on the

8 head and the threads on the steel barrel. So -- and

9 then here are the fins on the steel barrel. So

10 basically a cross-section of the cylinder.

11 MR. TUBBS: Now, the question that I would

12 ask if I had not worked on this was if there's no slip

13 between the head and barrel, why is there any stress

14 down below? In other words, if there's no -- if

15 there's no slip between the seal band of the head and

16 the barrel, why is there a stress down below? And the

17 answer to that is that you've got shear strength that

18 is going to transfer the load, transfer some of the

19 load down below regardless of whether it's slips or

20 not.

21 And when we take cylinders apart out in our

22 shop and, you know, those of you that have been there

23 realize we take a lot of them apart every day, and if

24 you look at the seal bands in the head and the barrel

25 for cylinders that have run successfully through, you
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1 don't find any metal transfer between the seal band and

2 the -- of the head and the steel barrel. Those of you

3 that have worked with composite structures where you've

4 got aluminum and steel working together, if they have

5 relative motion, you get, as a -- as a part of that,

6 you get metal transfer. So basically what we are

7 saying is that the successful cylinders that run

8 through to TBO don't have a slip between the seal bands

9 of the head and the barrel.

10 MR. GILLESPIE: So I just want to kind

11 of -- you can see this is the head that's going on, on

12 to cylinder. Here's the cylinder here, and it's coming

13 around. This is just a portion of it. The area that

14 he is indicating as the slip band is right here. This

15 head is torqued down on. You have a slip band where

16 when the piston has compressed and you've got your

17 pressure pushing up on your head, this area here is

18 very tight with interference in the normal operation,

19 which is going to have a lot of friction capability.

20 As this head expands out, it no longer will provide you

21 with any type of a load-carrying capability and it

22 transfers down to your -- well, to all of your threads;

23 primarily, your first thread.

24 Does that make sense? Anybody have any

25 questions as far as what they're really kind of looking
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1 at? Sometimes with these models I take it for granted

2 because I've been looking at them forever, and somebody

3 else looks at it and says, "I don't know what the heck

4 that is."

5 MR. GARVENS: So in these two extreme

6 conditions, we see in the full slip condition this peak

7 stress, whatever you call that -- metatarsal stress?

8 MR. TUBBS: Right. No.

9 MR. GARVENS: It was -- it was 30,000 and

10 in this instance it's 5 and so those match our

11 expectation that we are at.

12 Do you want to say anything about the

13 aluminum?

14 MR. TUBBS: Yes, well, I also want to point

15 out, if you will look at the thread relief that is

16 above the top loaded thread and look at the stresses --

17 MR. GILLESPIE: And I'll just -- I'll stand

18 here while he's saying these things. Here's your

19 thread relief right here.

20 MR. TUBBS: Right.

21 MR. GILLESPIE: It's a very large radius

22 comparatively speaking to what your thread radiuses

23 are.

24 MR. TUBBS: Right. And what you see if you

25 look at the stress levels there with it locked up at
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1 the seal band, the stress levels below the seal band

2 are very, very close to the stresses that we recorded

3 with the strain gauges that are in that location.

4 MR. GILLESPIE: And the strain gauges are

5 right there.

6 MR. TUBBS: So the strain gauges are right

7 in here.

8 MR. GILLESPIE: And they are going in the

9 head. So the low stress that you are seeing right

10 here, we are showing 3 ksi, is very close right now to

11 what their -- their corresponding numbers are from

12 empirical data. We still -- and I don't want to give

13 this as an end justification because we are still

14 looking at combining temperature data, friction, all of

15 these different components together before we get a

16 conclusive answer, but it is very -- it looks very

17 encouraging and very straightforward right now that the

18 temperature of the engine is having the dramatic

19 effect. That's what's -- that is what it is increasing

20 the load on the threads as the temperature goes up.

21 And we have been able to show that. We just don't have

22 that all correlated yet.

23 MR. THOMPSON: Earlier you mentioned

24 torquing it down. Have y'all looked if it's not

25 torqued all the way, if it's -- or torqued too much --
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1 MR. TUBBS: In this particular model --

2 MR. THOMPSON: -- if it's --

3 MR. TUBBS: In this particular model, we

4 used a torque that we work around.

5 MR. GILLESPIE: We take the head, we screw

6 it on, and right here you see that the head actually

7 impacts -- not impacts. Is pushed down and then they

8 continue to torque.

9 MR. TUBBS: Compresses. Right.

10 MR. GILLESPIE: So they are torquing the

11 threads, pulling down on the head and holding it here.

12 So you have a pre-load that would be right up at the

13 top of your cylinder against the head.

14 MR. THOMPSON: Do y'all control that

15 torque?

16 MR. GILLESPIE: Yes.

17 MR. TUBBS: Yes. But now let me -- let me

18 also go a little further, though. The torque provides

19 a pre-load on the threads, which changes the stress

20 ratio in the top loaded thread. That's the design

21 parameter. But when you get above 460 degrees, you've

22 got enough expansion in the aluminum that you have

23 alleviated all of that. So your stress ratio at that

24 point turns to zero, which is zero over whatever the

25 level it is. And so what's happened is that from going
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1 from a very -- a pretty fair -- a good stress ratio in

2 the normal operating range, a factor making it worse is

3 the fact that you change over those temperatures, you

4 lose that benefit of the stress ratio.

5 MR. THOMPSON: So in the normal operating

6 range, if it's not torqued enough do you see increases

7 in the stress?

8 MR. TUBBS: We really haven't seen the, you

9 know -- the analysis is a little inconclusive right

10 now. And I know what you are asking, but I know that

11 at the critical range it doesn't make any difference.

12 MR. GILLESPIE: Do you have empirical data,

13 test data, showing different torques?

14 MR. TUBBS: Not right now, I don't.

15 MR. GILLESPIE: You don't.

16 MR. TUBBS: I don't. But we've done a lot

17 of calculations to look at the stress in that -- in

18 that distance between the top of the barrel and the top

19 loaded thread and look at the expansion of that versus

20 the expansion of the steel.

21 MR. GARVENS: You're sort of saying you'd

22 like to see us run the model without the pre-load to

23 see what we would learn?

24 MR. TUBBS: I think that's a great idea.

25 MR. THOMPSON: Well, I'm just curious
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1 because when I visited and I saw the assembly of the

2 cylinders, it appeared that maintaining or having a

3 torque set value the way you assemble it would be

4 difficult because there was a guy spinning the head on

5 and then whacking it with a mallet.

6 MR. TUBBS: Yeah, right.

7 MR. THOMPSON: So just curious if that

8 has -- plays any role into what stresses you see.

9 MR. TUBBS: I do know that today other

10 people assemble them with an assembly rig, but in the

11 years past everybody did it with a wrench.

12 MR. GILLESPIE: Was it a quantified number?

13 MR. TUBBS: It is -- it was not then. The

14 traditional way of assembling the cylinders was not.

15 It was just how big the guy was doing them.

16 MR. MAGUIRE: Jimmy, is that change in

17 assembly process reflected in the timeline chart that

18 you showed earlier today?

19 MR. TUBBS: Yes. That started, that -- we

20 went from a, really, a manual system to a considerably

21 better system in December of 2004.

22 MR. PRIESTER: And so what is that current

23 system for assembly?

24 MR. TUBBS: Well, the current system right

25 now is control the temperature and then they torque it
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1 and then they've got -- they go ahead and hit it to

2 produce that torque level.

3 MR. PRIESTER: What is the -- how does the

4 guy know that he has achieved the minimum torque

5 required and not exceeded the maximum torque?

6 MR. TUBBS: There was -- we never had a

7 minimum torque required as a part of our assembly

8 procedure.

9 MR. PRIESTER: So just however hard he hits

10 it with the mallet?

11 MR. TUBBS: Right.

12 MR. VICKERS: See, one of the beauties of

13 the finite element analysis is you can do better

14 studies to try to explore these kind of things.

15 MR. TUBBS: That is exactly what we --

16 that's one of the things that we want to look at,

17 because we can look at the stress level without any --

18 because we applied a torque level for this model.

19 MR. PRIESTER: But the drawings don't

20 include an assembly torque per se.

21 MR. TUBBS: No. And there -- that's true.

22 Because the only benefit -- the benefit that you get

23 from a torque is to change the stress ratio in the root

24 of the threads.

25 MR. GILLESPIE: But again, your indications
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1 from your testing don't show that the torque is the

2 problem.

3 MR. TUBBS: No.

4 MR. GILLESPIE: It's the temperature as you

5 increase.

6 MR. TUBBS: Right.

7 MR. GILLESPIE: That it -- what it comes

8 down -- what it seems to come down to currently is that

9 the cylinders and the head, being different materials,

10 expand at different rates. And as the aluminum is

11 expanding faster than the head -- excuse me -- than the

12 cylinder, you are losing that friction between the

13 cylinder and the head.

14 MR. PRIESTER: So let me ask, if you -- if

15 we don't have a calibrated torque, a design torque, and

16 I think -- Jimmy, did you say if the guy torques it

17 down harder, does that -- does that initiate a higher

18 pre-load on the first thread?

19 MR. TUBBS: Oh sure. Any torque adds

20 the -- to a pre-load in the thread.

21 MR. PRIESTER: Okay, so I'm just -- I'm

22 just wondering, say, if I torque it down pretty hard, I

23 have a higher initial stress in the first thread. And

24 then as temperature changes, I transfer load -- the

25 seal band's load then superimposes on that pre-load on
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1 the thread, right?

2 MR. TUBBS: The part that is transitioning

3 past the seal band is added to the threads.

4 MR. PRIESTER: So if I start out with a

5 higher pre-load on the thread and then add to it the

6 contributing effects of loss of seal band friction, I

7 would have a higher load on the first thread due to the

8 superposition of those two loads, would I not?

9 MR. TUBBS: Well --

10 MR. CROOKSHANKS: There's a -- there's a

11 limit, though. There's a limit in the amount of

12 pre-load that you can put on --

13 MR. TUBBS: Right.

14 MR. CROOKSHANKS: -- these threads in the

15 basic design. If you look at the basic design of the

16 Continental cylinder, it's going to impact that

17 shoulder up there. So you can only go so far. It's

18 not like you can keep torquing it and getting better

19 and better and better. You've got that design where it

20 impacts that shoulder of the head and then you can't

21 really go much farther. You can give it a bang and

22 that's about it.

23 MR. TUBBS: It embosses.

24 MR. CROOKSHANKS: We see that when we -- we

25 did a whole bunch of investigation down at TCM in how
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1 they do their cylinders and there's just -- there's an

2 upper limit there. You can't go any farther. So

3 you've got to kind of take that into consideration.

4 MR. TUBBS: The major effect is the change

5 in stress ratio, and that has an impact in the fatigue

6 bands of the cylinders. So as the stress ratio goes

7 from a positive stress level to a higher positive

8 stress level, that's a -- that's a number divided by

9 another number and -- and then as you go to zero, then

10 that stress ratio goes to zero. And if you plot those,

11 you will see a little difference in the fatigue bands.

12 But that's the -- that's the -- the -- the only real

13 ben -- only real change you get. But then when you get

14 beyond 460 to 500 degrees or so, it's -- it's kind of a

15 moot point because you've lost it anyway.

16 MR. VICKERS: So what all -- you said

17 you've done a lot of testing. He's trying to correlate

18 the model. How much of that testing has now been

19 verified in the model at this point?

20 MR. GILLESPIE: We are just in the initial

21 stages of verifying the temperatures and the -- all of

22 the different components that go along with the

23 empirical data. That's why we are here presenting only

24 these slides. I have -- I -- and I can actually show

25 you, Bill, you know, the -- you know, like with bird
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1 strike how we do a simulation going through a time

2 series, we are doing the same thing using nonlinear

3 runs.

4 And to be honest, we were hoping they --

5 they kind of -- they came to me and we started getting

6 into this and, you know, the length of the run time, we

7 just weren't able to come up with a conclusion that we

8 need to in order to -- to give you the end result.

9 We'll have that and every indication right now shows

10 that, from what I've looked at with Jimmy and the rest

11 of the gentlemen at their company, it -- it really does

12 look like the temperatures on the runs that we have

13 made, you can see, and just common sense tells you the

14 expansion being different in the aluminum is going to

15 relieve that band. And the simple runs that we have

16 made like this showing total load-carrying capability

17 by the band versus none, a total slip, it shows very

18 close to what they are showing in their empirical data.

19 What we need to do is run more cases

20 showing actual temperatures. We are going to take the

21 temperatures, start running them up, changing them with

22 specific interferences between the heads and then we

23 will be able to see where that changes, and that's what

24 we're -- that's the data that we will be coming up with

25 shortly.
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1 MR. VICKERS: And that's test, or a model?

2 MR. GILLESPIE: That will be modeled. They

3 have already run enough data I think right now that we

4 can use a lot of that to correlate to the model.

5 MR. VICKERS: So have you encompassed it,

6 like --

7 MR. GILLESPIE: No, not --

8 MR. VICKERS: Have you been doing some

9 things in between but you've encompassed it by tests?

10 MR. TUBBS: We've got the end points.

11 MR. GILLESPIE: We have the end points in

12 the model but we do not have the data in between, and

13 that's why we are not showing you any curves. Jimmy

14 wanted to be able to show curves that would match the

15 empirical data. I can't give him that information yet

16 because we have not been able to generate it yet.

17 MR. VICKERS: But at this point in time

18 from what I'm understanding, your intention is to try

19 to determine that magic temperature at different

20 interference?

21 MR. GILLESPIE: I won't even say magic

22 temperature. You know the curve that he showed earlier

23 showing the strains and as they hit 460 to 520, they

24 start to kick up. And the question is why do they kick

25 up? Why is it moving to increase that stress? Because
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1 that stress is what is obviously failing the heads.

2 We're looking at trying to show that the -- that the

3 design, the inherent design of a steel tube with an

4 aluminum head as it goes past 460 degrees with a known

5 interference of 8,000 and above, that we're going to be

6 able to show that, look, you are starting to lose this

7 slip band capability and it's being taken more in the

8 threads and we're going to try and correlate it

9 directly to the test, yeah. And that's our intent.

10 And then we will be able to show you not

11 just a point or two points; we'll be able to explain

12 the phenomena and then show you that, similar to the

13 bird strike where we can go through time, we'll go

14 through temperature and we'll start showing you how we

15 increase the temperature on it and how the loads will

16 change.

17 MR. VICKERS: Temperature was one. We were

18 also told earlier because of the glazing that it could

19 be a pressure issue; as you said, there's a change in

20 your products of --

21 MR. GILLESPIE: But I don't think you're --

22 you are not propose -- you are just proposing that the

23 increased temperature is what is really doing it.

24 Right? The glaze --

25 MR. TUBBS: We -- I -- I don't know --
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1 MR. GILLESPIE: -- starts out lower

2 temperature --

3 MR. TUBBS: Yeah.

4 MR. GILLESPIE: -- and then comes up at a

5 higher temperature quicker.

6 MR. TUBBS: Well, we -- it --

7 MR. CROOKSHANKS: Stress.

8 MR. TUBBS: It's plotted --

9 MR. GILLESPIE: I'm sorry. You're right.

10 Higher stress quicker.

11 MR. TUBBS: It's plotted against CHT, see?

12 That's the -- that's the --

13 MR. GILLESPIE: Thank you.

14 MR. TUBBS: We are plotted against the same

15 temperature band. So at the same temperature, it's a

16 higher stress.

17 MR. GILLESPIE: Yes. That's what I meant

18 to say.

19 MR. TUBBS: So it's got to be a pressure

20 related effect.

21 MR. VICKERS: And you are going to explore

22 a variety of different --

23 MR. GILLESPIE: Yes.

24 MR. TUBBS: What it --

25 MR. VICKERS: -- factors and see --
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1 MR. TUBBS: Or --

2 MR. VICKERS: -- you know, there could be

3 an interplay --

4 MR. TUBBS: Sure.

5 MR. VICKERS: -- between them, but -- but

6 you are going to try to explore all this to see what's

7 your dominant effects and hopefully predict something

8 from where we stand?

9 MR. GILLESPIE: As you can imagine, Bill,

10 you could do this as a Ph.D. project. Currently, what

11 I foresaw doing is simply trying to match their

12 empirical data and not try to show every single

13 variation in how each component works but, rather, show

14 that when we model it and we change the temperatures,

15 that we would be able to show, as did the curves that

16 Jimmy has, the temperature -- or the stress level going

17 up with temperature at that critical zone. I don't

18 think -- there was no plan currently to look at

19 glazing, et cetera. We can start doing these things.

20 We can do more, if that's what the FAA requires, we

21 will do that, but I think right now we were trying to

22 show simply increased temperature is causing the

23 critical location to go up in stress.

24 MR. VICKERS: With the exception of you

25 already had a whole discussion about glazing and that
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1 causing the stress to go up and all that.

2 MR. CROOKSHANKS: Go look at that plot

3 again. The glaze bore stress is actually lower at

4 normal operating temperatures.

5 MR. TUBBS: Yes, it is.

6 MR. CROOKSHANKS: You've got a lower

7 stress. So it's kind of better in the normal range,

8 but once you get up above normal limits, then it gets

9 worse. So got to be careful on what the effect of

10 glazed bore is.

11 MR. TUBBS: That's right.

12 MR. CROOKSHANKS: Whether you are talking

13 normal temperature ranges or above the normal limits.

14 MR. GILLESPIE: And all of our test results

15 show that --

16 MR. VICKERS: There's an interplay

17 between --

18 MR. CROOKSHANKS: There's an in --

19 MR. VICKERS: Sure.

20 MR. CROOKSHANKS: There's no doubt there's

21 an interplay.

22 MR. VICKERS: And --

23 MR. GILLESPIE: There's an interplay --

24 MR. CROOKSHANKS: But the -- but the effect

25 is that -- the effect that -- the effect is kind of the
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1 same: You see a kickup in the stress levels at a

2 temp -- at about the same temperature band.

3 MR. TUBBS: Right.

4 MR. CROOKSHANKS: I'm not going to say it's

5 here or it's there, but there's a temperature band

6 there where the stresses versus -- a glazed bore versus

7 a non-glazed bore, they still kick up.

8 MR. GILLESPIE: The phenomena is the same.

9 MR. CROOKSHANKS: And there's a inflection

10 point in that stress.

11 MR. VICKERS: But do you intend in your

12 validation exercise to only address temperature, or to

13 address these other effects which have also been

14 introduced here?

15 MR. GILLESPIE: We were not going to -- we

16 were not planning currently, unless the gentleman want

17 me to, to take into account the glazing issue.

18 MR. TUBBS: But what we can do, Bill, is

19 look at the thread stress that matches up to the

20 strains that we've measured. And so if it's -- because

21 it's bound to be some kind of a pressure influence, or

22 a further -- maybe further reducing the interference

23 fit. I don't know what the effect really is, but we

24 can match that and say that's a strain down at the

25 threads that's either within limits or is going to
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1 produce a failure.

2 MR. GILLESPIE: Bill, I don't see the need

3 to do the glazed bore, simply because you have

4 empirical data showing you that they do match. If we

5 can show you how a normal bore works, I think the

6 empirical data would stand on its own and say yeah, the

7 same phenomena is affecting it.

8 Now, why -- why does the glazing have

9 different thermal properties or affect the heating

10 different or the combustion, I don't think that that

11 would be as important as the fact that what's causing

12 this problem is the increase in temperature in the

13 engine and the cylinder and that that's -- the data

14 they have shown me is kind of convincing me that -- I

15 don't even want to say "kind of." It is convincing me

16 that the temperature on these engines seems to be

17 running higher than what people really anticipated,

18 what they thought that they're getting. Even on

19 engines where you are recording the temperature, the

20 variation is such in the empirical data that it -- it

21 was very surprising to me.

22 MR. VICKERS: I'm just trying to understand

23 in your validation exercise, your model, how much of

24 the big picture is being considered.

25 MR. GILLESPIE: Currently I would say we
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1 are not going to -- and please correct me, gentlemen,

2 if you have any other ideas or thoughts. I don't

3 believe it's needed, and I had not intended on looking

4 at the glazing issue.

5 MR. GARVENS: You can't, can you?

6 MR. GILLESPIE: We could -- we could start

7 to look at the parameters. I don't know. I'm in --

8 I'll be straight out, I don't know that much about

9 glazing and the combustion and the material properties

10 of the glaze surface. We could start researching it,

11 finding out if there's data out there and put it in.

12 MR. GARVENS: You had asked about what's

13 the physics, and we don't know what the physics are of

14 why glazing spikes the stresses --

15 MR. GILLESPIE: But again, I would --

16 MR. GARVENS: -- and we would be interested

17 to know.

18 MR. GILLESPIE: I would -- I would want to

19 go back, as Clint pointed out.

20 MR. CROOKSHANKS: Well, I think we can --

21 if you think physics, when you have a glazed bore,

22 you've got higher blow-by, so you're not getting the

23 same combustion pressures in there; therefore, you've

24 got a lower stress because you're not getting the same

25 pressure.
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1 MR. GILLESPIE: Yeah.

2 MR. CROOKSHANKS: So that makes sense. The

3 temperature is depending on -- on what theory you think

4 it is. But there -- the temperature issue in the --

5 the rate of expansion of the aluminum versus the steel,

6 we know that, there's a definite difference there, and

7 we know that this seal band interference based on the

8 pre-load placed there, that you can -- at some point

9 there's some temperature that's going to cause that,

10 whatever that seal band is, to go away.

11 MR. TUBBS: One of --

12 MR. GARVENS: Oil --

13 MR. TUBBS: One of --

14 MR. GARVENS: -- is getting in the seal

15 band.

16 MR. TUBBS: Right. One of the bottom line

17 things that you have to come away with this is when you

18 take a look at these cylinders, somebody from

19 Continental Motors was pretty dadburned smart. You

20 know, they didn't have all the -- the capability that

21 we have today. But back in the day, somebody did

22 enough testing that they were able to -- to set up a --

23 some limits.

24 MR. GARVENS: Right. It's amazing that 460

25 is the --
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1 MR. TUBBS: It's amazing.

2 MR. GARVENS: -- design limit and it's

3 exactly what we are seeing --

4 MR. TUBBS: Yeah.

5 MR. GARVENS: -- as the inflection point.

6 And it's not -- you know, we keep increasing

7 temperature.

8 MR. GILLESPIE: And back then -- and back

9 then, they probably did do testing like you are

10 showing.

11 MR. TUBBS: Oh yes. Yes. Carl Goulet and

12 Paul Eberle and those guys tested all the time. They

13 were running a lot of tests.

14 MR. SHARON: Certainly in the

15 temperatures -- and maybe Clint can answer this. In

16 the last four or five years, what are operates doing

17 now to keep the temperatures down? I mean, is there

18 any --

19 MR. CROOKSHANKS: We're not aware of

20 anything, you know. In fact, this whole temperature

21 thing I guess came about because we wrote a

22 recommendation, we said, hey, there's something going

23 on here, we're not even sure what it is, and we

24 suggested to Jimmy and the rest of the folks that you

25 really need to do some testing, develop some kind of a
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1 rig, this fatigue test rig, you know, to figure out

2 what the root cause is. And we threw that back to them

3 to say show us what you think it is. And so this --

4 MR. SHARON: This is your meeting with Mark

5 Rumizen and --

6 MR. CROOKSHANKS: Yeah, way back when, you

7 know. Because they always make -- you know, they're --

8 in the early days of the ideas for this recommendation,

9 they said, well, we really don't know what it is,

10 what's causing it, and we said, well, we agree with

11 you; the fact of the matter is, is we have failures and

12 we need to address those failures. That's when we

13 suggested to them that they develop some kind of a test

14 mechanism to start gathering data.

15 MR. SHARON: But nothing's been put out to

16 the general public about that particularly, right?

17 MR. TUBBS: Not really. But one of the

18 things that has happened, and it very well may be a

19 mitigating effect for the number of failures that we

20 are seeing and I talked to the people from JPI, and

21 they suggested to me that they believe that between all

22 of the current engine monitoring systems, that probably

23 a half or more of the general aviation airplanes today

24 have engine monitoring systems. They're putting

25 them -- more and more and more are being sold. They
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1 say they are just scaling that based on their sales.

2 MR. PRIESTER: So have you tried to find

3 out, of the failed cylinders that you do have, did any

4 of those come off of aircraft that were equipped with

5 such systems?

6 MR. TUBBS: I have not been able to -- when

7 we really got started into this, you know, remember,

8 most of these things failed back in the earlier days

9 and we were -- we were not paying as close attention as

10 we should have.

11 MR. GARVENS: But, I mean, your idea is

12 very good and it's something that --

13 MR. TUBBS: Oh yeah.

14 MR. GARVENS: -- we will do --

15 MR. TUBBS: We will.

16 MR. GARVENS: -- and make sure that we

17 can --

18 MR. SHARON: Well, that --

19 MR. GARVENS: -- do anything we can to

20 collect that data --

21 MR. GILLESPIE: Well, and I think --

22 MR. GARVENS: -- but we haven't done it

23 yet.

24 MR. SHARON: That -- well, that's where I

25 was lead -- I was -- where I was going with the
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1 temperature. If nothing's been changed particularly in

2 the last four or five years to monitor the temperature

3 and it's -- and, granted, some of your cylinders are

4 going on newer aircraft that have more sophisticated --

5 MR. TUBBS: Sure.

6 MR. SHARON: -- monitoring, but a lot of

7 them are still going on older aircraft that don't; yet,

8 we haven't had any failures. So. And you --

9 MR. CROOKSHANKS: I think that gets to a

10 different reason that maybe is coming later.

11 MR. TUBBS: Right.

12 MR. CROOKSHANKS: At least from what

13 they've presented to us. The reason that there's no

14 failures today or in the last 18 months is because of

15 some -- you know, they've done something to mitigate

16 the temperature effects.

17 MR. TUBBS: Right.

18 MR. CROOKSHANKS: So there's still

19 temperature effects, but they've mitigated them.

20 MR. TUBBS: Well, and the older cylinders

21 got through their -- if there was such a thing as

22 infant mortality, which means that they had break-in

23 issues and they -- and they created the failures or

24 they were able to get on through and the engines

25 finally broke in and they're running fine and
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1 everything is going good, and are they -- you know,

2 they -- they haven't had any more of the significant

3 overheat conditions, which we do know it does -- does

4 occur.

5 MR. GARVENS: So that there's -- I mean,

6 specifically on the question of has there been new

7 information or new campaigns, there's -- in tab 18 is

8 Teledyne's Top Care Program which emphasizes and was a

9 campaign, in our opinion, on their behalf to say they

10 recognized overtemperature as a critical risk and they

11 promoted you better take care of your cylinders, right?

12 MR. TUBBS: Right.

13 MR. GARVENS: Did -- somebody who knows it

14 better than me. But if you read that, that's what it

15 says. And we, you know, took that to heart recently

16 and published our 12-2 --

17 MR. TUBBS: 12-2.

18 MR. GARVENS: -- which describes

19 specifically how to identify instances of

20 overtemperature and describes the dangers of

21 overtemperature and glazed cylinder bores, and we are

22 trying to do our part in terms of, you know,

23 highlighting to the general industry the risks that are

24 associated with it, that there is a red line on your

25 machine --
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1 MR. DENTON: 13.

2 MR. GARVENS: -- and it's critical.

3 MR. DENTON: Section 13, by the way.

4 MR. PRIESTER: So -- so let me ask the

5 fundamental question: How easy is it for an

6 unsuspecting pilot to do something to cause the engine

7 to be at 460 or above, completely regardless of if I

8 had a gauge of any type or even measured the parameter,

9 what could a pilot -- how easy is it for a pilot to get

10 himself in a position where he's going to cause the

11 engine to actually run at 460 or above? I'm told

12 that -- I'm told that it's very difficult to make these

13 engines run above 420 absent some sort of anomaly.

14 MR. TUBBS: Well, you know --

15 MR. PRIESTER: I mean, we are --

16 MR. TUBBS: -- this is going to be

17 anecdotal, but let -- just let me just go on and say

18 that in our -- in our own airplane, we were flying that

19 for several years, our 414, we went out and bought a

20 JPI monitoring system and put it in our airplane and

21 the very first flight it flashed overtemp climbing out

22 probably at around 12 to 14,000 feet, and I climbed to

23 21 and it overtemped so I brought it back in.

24 Discussions with the manufacturer of the

25 system, we went back then and -- and calibrated the --
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1 both of them, our existing CHT system and the JPI

2 system using our test cell calibration equipment, and

3 the JPI system was within a couple of degrees. Our

4 factory CHT system in our 414 read almost 50 degrees

5 optimistic, and that's what I had been flying for the

6 last --

7 MR. GILLESPIE: Meaning lower.

8 MR. TUBBS: Yeah.

9 MR. GARVENS: It was reading lower.

10 MR. TUBBS: It was reading in the -- in the

11 390 to 400 degree range, to 410 in a climb and -- and I

12 was actually running 460 or above. And --

13 MR. PRIESTER: You're say -- you're saying

14 routinely these engines are being operated above 460.

15 MR. TUBBS: I wouldn't say routinely, but

16 I'd say very -- they are running up close to 460 and

17 occasionally they are going over 460. And --

18 MR. PRIESTER: But you don't have any data

19 to put on the table to show it.

20 MR. TUBBS: Well, I mean, we've got data

21 of --

22 MR. GARVENS: There's also, you know, when

23 it comes to proof of heat, we haven't gotten into

24 discussions or pictures of when you look at the

25 cylinder there's ways that you can tell that it's been
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1 overtemperatured.

2 MR. TUBBS: Right.

3 MR. GARVENS: The one that we have here

4 shows that, right?

5 MR. TUBBS: Right.

6 MR. GARVENS: Do you want to grab that?

7 MR. TUBBS: We've got photographs coming

8 up.

9 MR. PRIESTER: But there's tens and tens

10 and tens of thousands of aircraft out there.

11 MR. TUBBS: Right.

12 MR. PRIESTER: Many thousands of which have

13 such systems. It would be nice if you had, you know,

14 three, four, five, 10.

15 MR. TUBBS: Oh, absolutely. Right. I

16 don't disagree.

17 MR. PRIESTER: And it would seem that it's

18 not that difficult to collect that data from the field.

19 Is that difficult?

20 MR. GARVENS: Well, so, we'll try and --

21 MR. TUBBS: Well, and in fact --

22 MR. GARVENS: -- we expect to be able to

23 get it.

24 MR. TUBBS: All -- we've changed all of

25 our -- the people that are working with the people out
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1 in the field now have a checklist to go through that

2 they do, and they include all of that. They are asking

3 do you have an engine monitoring system, what

4 temperatures were you running, what phases of flight.

5 They are going through and asking those questions now.

6 So we will -- we're getting that information.

7 MR. THOMPSON: Have y'all looked into -- in

8 the SDR database I found a head separation in March of

9 '12. Are y'all aware of that one? Have you looked

10 into it?

11 MR. TUBBS: What is it? No.

12 MR. THOMPSON: It's one of your cylinders,

13 serial number 47038.

14 MR. TUBBS: What kind of a cylinder is it?

15 MR. THOMPSON: Let's see here. IO520F.

16 631397, March of '12. Just a -- it's a separation.

17 MR. TUBBS: I'm not aware of that.

18 MR. GARVENS: We do focus on trying to

19 validate and verify all of that data, so we can't

20 really do that now, but we --

21 MR. CROOKSHANKS: Well, it should be in the

22 book, right?

23 MR. GILLESPIE: It should be in the book.

24 MR. CROOKSHANKS: If it happened -- if it

25 happened last March, it should be in this book, right?
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1 MR. THOMPSON: Yeah, but, I mean --

2 MR. CROOKSHANKS: Because this is current

3 of -- as of --

4 MR. DENTON: That's Continental

5 Manufacturing.

6 MR. CROOKSHANKS: Would you guys have --

7 I -- at some point I think we've got --

8 MR. DENTON: Yeah, we -- we've got our --

9 MR. TUBBS: Yeah.

10 (Unintelligible overspeak)

11 MR. HAKALA: I just wanted to make one

12 comment. About six months ago, see, I also worked with

13 Alcar in San Antonio and they manufacture temperature

14 measuring equipment for not only ETT but cylinder head,

15 but Al Hunt there, he pointed out that back in the '70s

16 a lot of the single engine Cessnas had only a

17 Thermistor; in other words, it wasn't a thermocouple

18 but it was a --

19 MR. TUBBS: That's right.

20 MR. HAKALA: It's just a little coil of

21 wire. It's actually a resistor. And that's

22 calibrated. But those have a poor history on giving

23 you real -- an accurate temperature.

24 MR. TUBBS: Yeah. They are very accurate

25 when they are new, but as they age with the connections
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1 in the wires, they build up resistance and it changes.

2 And in fact, that's what we have in our -- in our 414

3 and our 421 both have Thermistors and the other gauges

4 also now.

5 MR. GILLESPIE: And the Thermistor was

6 showing 50 degrees low.

7 MR. TUBBS: Yes.

8 MR. HAKALA: And then the peculiarities, on

9 an annual inspection of an airplane, okay, they have to

10 calibrate the air speed and the altimeter, but there's

11 no requirement to ever check the calibration of the

12 temperature.

13 MR. TUBBS: Absolutely none. And we

14 were -- we were a part of that fat, dumb and happy with

15 our own airplanes. Our RV8 has better monitoring than

16 almost anything out there because you can put anything

17 in there you want. But, well, that's -- that's a

18 little off the point.

19 Let's -- I need -- I need to get on to what

20 we're -- you know, with all of this information, what

21 we're thinking and where we want to go with it.

22 MR. GARVENS: Right. Is this a good

23 transition point?

24 MR. STOLLER: Ready for a break?

25 MR. DENTON: Go to lunch?
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1 MR. TUBBS: It's a good transition point.

2 Why don't we break and come back in an hour.

3 MR. SHARON: That will work.

4 MR. TUBBS: All right. Come back at

5 1 o'clock.

6 MR. SHARON: How much more do you actually

7 have on your agenda today? How much time do you need,

8 I guess.

9 MR. TUBBS: I can -- I can finish my

10 presentation in 10 minutes, but it will probably take

11 two hours with questions.

12 MR. SHARON: Is that it, or --

13 MR. GARVENS: I think we'll probably have

14 an hour and a half after lunch.

15 MR. SHARON: Okay.

16 (Break from 11:51 a.m. until 1:31 p.m.)

17 MR. DENTON: Jimmy, we will move on to the

18 next slide.

19 MR. TUBBS: Okay. Move on to the next one.

20 Okay. What we -- what we believe, that the

21 analysis that we have conducted so far supports the

22 following position. We think that the 631397 is safe

23 when operated within limits and even with a margin, but

24 we are recommending the AEC inspection and removal at

25 TO for those pre-April 2006 cylinders. And this is
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1 really an expansion of our Mandatory Service Bulletin

2 06-2 through into the middle of April of '06. And the

3 rationale for that is that we are not able to validate

4 or verify the assembly parameters on that group of

5 cylinders.

6 And then all of the cylinders that were

7 manufactured with less than 11-thousandths inch

8 interference, the rationale there is that our testing

9 shows that 10-thousandths is safe, testing shows that

10 even under 460 degrees, 8-thousandths is safe as far as

11 interference fits are concerned, but this gives us a

12 margin of safety and we think that that would be a

13 reasonable approach.

14 But one thing that we would like to do is

15 to give credit for the inspections for anybody that has

16 the full engine monitoring, because with full engine

17 monitoring you can monitor the cylinder temperatures

18 and keep out of that high temperature operation. All

19 of the current cylinder monitoring have alarms that you

20 set and they flash and make you well aware of the

21 issues.

22 Next one.

23 Well, what does it tell us? What does the

24 testing and all of the work that we have done so far

25 tell us? They become critical if the CHT is above
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1 published limits, and if the break-in attempt doesn't

2 seal the piston rings and the cylinder bore. And I

3 could add to that if there is an anomaly that creates a

4 glaze, because it can be done after break-in. Break-in

5 is the predominant cause for glaze and high blow-by.

6 And we have to reiterate that the new assembly

7 practices with the new interference fits will not

8 prevent future failures. It does increase the

9 tolerance. It moves it up the range a little bit.

10 Next one.

11 The effects, though, you have to go back

12 and look at it because higher interference will not

13 prevent all future head-barrel separations, but it

14 pushes it up into the temperature region where

15 head-barrel separations may be the least of your

16 worries because at those temperature operations, that's

17 when you are going to have detonation, and detonation

18 can quickly degenerate into pre-ignition and it can

19 cause stuck valves, it can cause a lot of other

20 anomalies that can be a lot worse than the cylinder

21 head failure.

22 And let's go to the next one now.

23 I wanted to kind of give you an idea of

24 what the issues are with high cylinder operations and

25 how we know about it. What do we look for when we get
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1 cylinders in and we say these things have been running

2 hot? And these are the types of things that we look

3 for:

4 The cylinder in the middle, the barrel,

5 that's glaze. That's what glaze can look like.

6 Sometimes it's just spotty, but sometimes it covers a

7 good part of the cylinder bore. Whenever you run

8 glaze, you are going to see -- this is a cylinder from

9 a TSI 0520 NB engine on the right and that's the way

10 the cylinder looks when it has been running too hot,

11 and if you look under the piston, you see how black it

12 is under the piston. That's one of the -- probably the

13 best way to tell when a cylinder has been running too

14 hot after you've got it off of an engine is to look

15 under the piston, because if you've got blow-by, high

16 blow-by, you're going to have cook -- you are going to

17 be cooking that oil spray that is being sprayed in the

18 bottom of that piston and it is going to carbonize, and

19 that's the -- so you see the bottom of that piston

20 shows high glaze.

21 How hot was that cylinder running? Well,

22 I'll tell you, that one came off of our 414 right after

23 we found out how hot we were operating and had been

24 operating, and so we know that that cylinder was

25 running over 460 degrees for an extended period of
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1 time.

2 This is a dome, one of the cylinders that

3 broke, and piston, and when you see this kind of

4 splatter, that is detonation. That is caused by a

5 detonation. In fact, that's getting very close to

6 pre-ignition. What causes that? Well, it came out of

7 that spark plug primarily. So you would suspect that

8 there was some kind of an anomaly with the spark plug,

9 a cracked insulator, a loose spark plug, something like

10 that, because that can cause that to happen very

11 easily.

12 There's a -- when you look at the rocker

13 box, all you've got to do in an annual inspection is

14 pull a rocker box, and if you see something like that

15 you've got a problem.

16 And again, there's that same kind of

17 detonation that you saw in this cylinder but in a

18 different cylinder that had experienced head-barrel

19 separation. And can you see that, that frosty

20 deposition there, that's -- what that is, is aluminum

21 that's been heated enough and in the combustion it

22 splattered and splashed and deposited in the combustion

23 chamber.

24 MR. DENTON: What about the piston in the

25 lower left?
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1 MR. TUBBS: Well, that, that piston came

2 out of that cylinder.

3 MR. DENTON: And discolored, does it mean

4 anything?

5 MR. TUBBS: It's not -- absolutely it's

6 discolored, but the other thing you can see is it was

7 starting to -- the blow-by had gotten so severe that it

8 was actually torching the side of the piston.

9 MR. STOLLER: Melting away.

10 MR. TUBBS: It was melting away.

11 Here are some cylinders that have been

12 involved that we've pulled off of engines that were not

13 running overtemperature. This is a TSI 0520 engine.

14 That is what we would like to look -- like to see at

15 TBO, and this is a TBO cylinder. This Lycoming

16 cylinder right here came off of one of our test engines

17 that went through a 400 -- over a 400-hour endurance

18 and durability testing at and above limiting

19 temperature. Again there's the pistons, and you can

20 see that, yeah, they've got a little dark in them, but

21 they're nothing like the piston on the previous page.

22 That's what we see on an engine that has been running

23 at CHT limits.

24 Ty and I worked in a teardown a couple of

25 weeks ago where we pulled an engine down that had half
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1 of the TBO life gone and they were better than this and

2 really were -- were nice, and that's what we want to

3 see, a tan underside of the piston.

4 The rings, just normal wear in the rings

5 sealing up, sure you're going to have something up on

6 top that's going to -- you are going to see some of the

7 swirls and things on the chamber, but when you see the

8 skirts looking like that, then that's showing normal

9 operating conditions.

10 There's one just showing the piston rings.

11 The top compression ring is almost always worn

12 completely across the face. The second oil ring is

13 typically only from a third to a half of the wear

14 across the face of the ring. Remember, the rings are

15 tapered with about a 1-and-a-half degree taper on the

16 face of the ring except for the scraper ring which is

17 down below the pin. With a 1-and-a-half degree, that's

18 to help you break in. It's just like, you know, the

19 sharp edge will wear down faster and so we want a sharp

20 edge to wear round so that we get the ring to seal, and

21 when it seals properly you will see about a third to a

22 half of the second ring will show a shiny area and the

23 rest will not show any contact. If that second ring is

24 worn all the way across and if you reach your fingers

25 under the bottom of it and feel a little lip sharp edge
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1 - careful, you can cut yourself - then you've got high

2 blow-by.

3 Well, these are the type things that we

4 were asked about before and I just want to go through

5 them quickly. These things do cause overheating.

6 Induction. Mixture control. There is a lot of

7 controversy associated with mixture control right now,

8 and I'll say categorically that operating lean of peak

9 is benign as far as cylinders are concerned. Lean of

10 peak does not hurt cylinders. On the other end,

11 getting to lean of peak can really be a serious

12 situation. And the reason is that you have to learn

13 where peak is. And a lot of people re-learn it every

14 time they fly the airplane. So they go back up and

15 they milk it and milk it and milk it until they get

16 that peak operation. And Steve Stout from Champion

17 Spark Plug told me that he recently flew with a guy

18 that took well over 10 minutes just to locate the peak

19 EGT running the thing at pretty good power settings,

20 milking it back, afraid of it, nervous, worried about

21 it, not realizing he was in the worst place in the

22 world to be before he pulled it over to the lean side.

23 They've got some newer techniques that can

24 be more beneficial where they learn the mix, learn the

25 fuel flow that gives you a lean of peak operation and
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1 you do the big pull and pull it over to the lean of

2 peak.

3 Blocked injectors. We find a lot of

4 blocked injectors, especially in turbocharged engines

5 where there is a filter that you have a part of the

6 filter breaks loose or pieces of it come out and get

7 into the air side of the turbine and then go through to

8 the pressure side of the fuel injector and start

9 blocking some of the air holes and, boy, that changes

10 things really bad. In our test cells when we have run

11 that under controlled conditions, we've seen 600

12 degrees in a very short period of time before we could

13 get off of it, with somebody sitting there monitoring

14 nothing but the engine.

15 And ignition timing, of course we get some

16 timing, but, not only that, we get some defects that

17 can be occurring.

18 Loose spark plugs, broken insulators, bad

19 resistors. Resistors are not as much of a problem as I

20 originally thought because it turns out that you can't

21 statically measure the resistance of spark plugs and

22 get a good determination of the airworthiness of them,

23 but there are other ways to do it.

24 What other ones are relevant? Well, CHT

25 gauge is not required for many airplanes. We are
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1 talking about the 631397 or the 520 cylinders here, but

2 we've got the 65102's, the Lycoming cylinders we've

3 talked about in the past, we've got all other kinds of

4 engines that are operating out there in airplanes that

5 are not required to have CHT gauges. And so if you

6 don't have a CHT gauge, you've got no indication of

7 what's happening out there.

8 And then those that do have a CHT gauge,

9 all of the original Cessnas, the multi-engines, those

10 all came out with a resistance gauge, a Thermistor on

11 one cylinder on the engine. Back in the '80s we

12 conducted engine testing for Continental Motors under

13 contract, and -- on the Malibu with their -- with that

14 BE engine, TSL520BE engine, and we produced a book

15 about this thick (indicating) with the results of that

16 test, and we had variations in the CHTs of well over a

17 hundred degrees in an engine with a tuned induction

18 from one -- from one cylinder to the other. So, you

19 know, one CHT gauge just does not tell the story. And

20 they don't have to be calibrated. Pete brought up

21 while ago that you've got to calibrate a lot of things

22 on an annual, but you don't have to calibrate your CHT

23 gauges ever.

24 And they are not -- the mechanics are not

25 really trained about break-in procedures. You know,
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1 we've written documents, we go to seminars, we talk to

2 mechanics at the AI seminars and try to brief and talk

3 about break-in, but every year we find somebody that

4 buys a set of our cylinders, puts them on an engine and

5 sits them and runs them on the ground for over an hour

6 before they ever fly the airplane, and that's a formula

7 for disaster. It still happens and we need to work on

8 that, in that arena.

9 MR. GARVENS: Since pictures can be hard to

10 see the indicators of overtemperature, we brought one.

11 MR. TUBBS: The issues of break-in and CHT

12 gauges is a difficult one for us to overcome. I think

13 that the industry is making some advantages -- or some

14 advances, but there are still issues.

15 MR. STOLLER: That's probably the best.

16 See the blackened area?

17 MR. TUBBS: Is that one of ours or --

18 MR. GILLESPIE: You have looked at not just

19 your cylinders and your heads, but numerous --

20 MR. TUBBS: Oh yes.

21 MR. GILLESPIE: -- industry-wide, and I

22 think you want to emphasize that.

23 MR. TUBBS: We do. And --

24 MR. STOLLER: Let me, to start off, they're

25 more new than repairing in the test, but used to get to
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1 300 a day in the shop, we're down to about 35 cylinders

2 a day arriving for repair every single day.

3 MR. GARVENS: What about installation,

4 Jimmy, cowling?

5 MR. TUBBS: Well, installation is -- is a

6 big issue because of the baffle, and part -- typically

7 we find on cylinder head temperatures about 10 degrees

8 to 20 degrees CHT difference with a 1 -- with 1-inch

9 gap in your baffles. And so as the baffles get older,

10 if they go through the annuals and they don't go back

11 and really put the baffles back in good shape, the

12 baffles have a tendency to crack. A lot of the baffles

13 are made out of 2024-T3 and that's a material that

14 cracks pretty readily. There are some better -- better

15 alloys for that, but people haven't found them. It

16 seems like instead of going with a -- something that

17 doesn't crack as bad, they still go with a 2024-T3.

18 It's the most -- it's easiest to find out in the field.

19 And they crack and pieces break out of them due to

20 vibration, and that creates a serious problem for us.

21 MR. GARVENS: Anything to say about that

22 there was pink discoloration?

23 MR. TUBBS: Well, we see a lot of pink. In

24 fact, I don't know whether that cylinder has it or not,

25 but we see a lot of them that have a very unusual pink
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1 tinge to the cylinders where they've been overheated,

2 especially Continentals. Lycomings just burn off the

3 paint and turn kind of a frosty silver. But on the

4 Continentals they turn a color not quite that vivid but

5 that kind of a color, and we have taken scrapings and

6 sent them into the lab and they tell us that most of it

7 is lead, but we don't know where the lead is coming

8 from. So that's maybe -- Derek, have you seen that

9 pink?

10 MR. NASH: Just a couple of times.

11 MR. TUBBS: Yeah.

12 MR. NASH: Rarely.

13 MR. TUBBS: It's not a lot, but we do see

14 it, and we don't know what the pink really is.

15 MR. GILLESPIE: I think one of the

16 important factors is they are not finding it on their

17 cylinders and on their heads, but rather, on

18 Continental's, on all of the different OEMs as well as

19 theirs, they are finding the overtemperatures.

20 MR. TUBBS: Yes.

21 MR. GILLESPIE: And you haven't quantified

22 it yet.

23 MR. TUBBS: No.

24 MR. GILLESPIE: Right. But you are finding

25 that across the spectrum.
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1 MR. TUBBS: You know, we have not tried to

2 document everybody else's cylinder problems. That just

3 hasn't been a focus of ours in years past, and we only

4 do it now because it, you know, it gives us a direction

5 to --

6 MR. GILLESPIE: More data.

7 MR. TUBBS: -- to look. More data. Some

8 of the factors, we saw some really -- we saw some

9 really high Continental cylinder failures in the past

10 years and one of the factors that I am fairly sure is a

11 part of the rationale is that we had a lot more chrome

12 cylinder bores in the past.

13 Now, many of you probably aren't old enough

14 to remember when we had the channel chrome process for

15 cylinders, but we -- there were quite a number of us in

16 the business that were doing channel chrome, and

17 channel chrome is a very, very durable cylinder bore

18 coating and it keeps it from corroding.

19 The problem with channel chrome, it is

20 extremely difficult to break in. And -- and oil

21 burners were a real problem. Probably one of our

22 biggest issues back in the day were oil burners, and we

23 did channel chrome cylinders for well over 50 years.

24 There were a lot of the head-barrel separations back in

25 that time and we just didn't know what to look for. We
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1 now know that the root cause is overheat operation.

2 Changing is -- is kind of difficult, and that's the

3 next direction we want to go.

4 Next one.

5 We've held some discussions with Small

6 Airplane Directorate several times, we are on some

7 committees with Earl Lawrence, and that gives us a

8 venue to spout a little bit. So we've done that. And

9 but he's -- he's been very clear that mandating older

10 airplanes to be retrofitted with CHT gauges is just not

11 going to be practical. But they do believe it would

12 be -- and they believe it would be difficult to impose

13 calibration requirements on these older airplanes also,

14 but there may be a way to address it on the new

15 airplanes.

16 I don't know how many of you here are aware

17 of the F-44 committee that is -- that is working on an

18 update or a new Part 23 and that is going on right now.

19 Ty and I are on the power plant side of that committee.

20 And so that -- this is one of the areas that we are

21 going to be certain that we are able to address unless

22 we get voted down, because everything has to be voted

23 on, but this is an area that we are going to be

24 passionate about is to get CHT systems as a requirement

25 under the new Part 23.
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1 Specifics. We're going to -- we suggest

2 the following with a draft service bulletin or -- yeah,

3 Mandatory Service Bulletin, and we're going to

4 recommend a repetitive inspection and removal at

5 overhaul those cylinders produced since end of MSB 06-2

6 up through April. We're not changing 06-2 until we are

7 told to because we have had some conferences and been

8 advised that we shouldn't be changing 06-2. We don't

9 have the assembly data on those cylinders so we can't

10 segregate those cylinders into any kind of groups.

11 MR. VICKERS: What kind of inspections?

12 MR. TUBBS: Mainly looking for the crack,

13 where the cracks -- where they are, where they progress

14 from around the cylinder between the fins. You do it

15 with a low pressure with a spray bottle, catch them

16 before they --

17 MR. NASH: Bubble test.

18 MR. TUBBS: Yeah. Bubble test.

19 And we recommend a repetitive inspection

20 and removal at overhaul of the cylinders produced since

21 2006 with less than 11-thousandths seal band

22 interference, and that shows that that would provide us

23 an adequate margin of safety for temperature

24 excursions, actually give us a margin even beyond 460

25 degrees. But we would like to give credit for engine
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1 monitors, which would mean, instead of a 50-hour

2 inspection, they could do the inspections at annuals.

3 What we are going to do even better and

4 more is to provide owners/operators with detailed

5 information about high cylinder temps, glazed cylinder

6 bores, and that's our Service Information Bulletin 12-2

7 and I believe there is a copy in your --

8 MR. DENTON: That is correct, there is a

9 copy in the notebook.

10 MR. TUBBS: I don't know what tab that is.

11 MR. HARMON: 13.

12 MR. TUBBS: 13.

13 MR. HARMON: And was this issue 12/4/2012,

14 it was already issued?

15 MR. TUBBS: Yes. If y'all notice, it's not

16 an FAA-approved document. It's just our own approval.

17 And --

18 MR. GILLESPIE: She just asked to go back.

19 MS. COX: I did have a question. How are

20 you going to tell people if they have an 11 seal band

21 interference or not?

22 MR. TUBBS: That's a good question. I like

23 that. We're going to give them serial numbers.

24 MR. STOLLER: Specific serial numbers.

25 MR. GILLESPIE: They've got the data for
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1 those.

2 MR. TUBBS: We've got the data.

3 MR. GILLESPIE: And those that they do not

4 have data for, they have already made the

5 recommendation that they be inspected.

6 MR. DENTON: We have a draft of that. I

7 guess we could pass that around now. Fairly short.

8 MS. COX: I had another question, too. You

9 haven't talked yet about the dome radius failure.

10 MR. TUBBS: We slightly went through it and

11 did say we did have some of the dome radius failures,

12 and we did -- and I mentioned - at least I think I did,

13 in my mind I did - that we changed the radius from 30

14 to 45-thousandths I believe in the middle of 2004 and

15 there have been no failures of cylinders produced since

16 that time in that -- in that area. There have been no

17 failures of cylinders with the higher radius, the

18 larger radius.

19 The FAA has a bully pulpit and can make a

20 difference. Now that we have identified, at least from

21 our perspective we have identified that high cylinder

22 temperatures is a valid -- well, is a real safety

23 issue, and so an advisory -- we don't know that the

24 NTSB ever has any kind of advisory, but if they do have

25 a venue that they put out discussing safety issues,
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1 then I just throw it up there and say, well, maybe the

2 NTSB could also help in advertising or getting the word

3 out, and the root cause information should be shared.

4 And we're working on the publication, so we've got the

5 12-2.

6 I don't know whether you-all saw the --

7 Mike Busch did put out an article. He called us and

8 talked to us about this a while back. He wrote that

9 Separation Anxiety bulletin that came out in Cessna

10 Pilot Magazine earlier and came out last month in the

11 Sport Aviation, which has a really large distribution,

12 and that, we think, is the kind of thing that can help,

13 and we also think that's one of the reasons why more

14 and more airplanes are getting engine monitoring

15 systems installed.

16 MR. THOMPSON: Just on this handout, this

17 list of serial numbers.

18 MR. TUBBS: That's the -- those are --

19 those are under 11-thousandths.

20 MR. THOMPSON: Under 11-thousandths.

21 MS. COX: The failures that you have had so

22 far would all fall into this?

23 MR. TUBBS: Yes. You know, again, we had

24 originally prepared this. This was one that we were

25 trying to give the NTSB before we got into a lot of
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1 discussion here a few weeks ago. They could promote a

2 technical root cause -- root cause based approach to

3 the safety issue and could encourage root cause issues

4 to be provided to the aviation public by the FAA. We

5 would like to see maybe A-12-7 restructured a bit to

6 address the root cause problems with what we know now.

7 I don't know whether that's possible, but that is our

8 point.

9 I reiterate that last week in our meeting

10 with the NTSB, Mr. DeLisi suggested that the changes to

11 the safety recommendation are better served by the FAA

12 coming back with these points than us, that they --

13 their safety recommendation went to the FAA and the

14 response needs to come back from there.

15 And that's all I have.

16 MR. DENTON: I just want to go back to if

17 there are any comments or questions before we -- I

18 guess there's a couple of more slides to go over.

19 MR. TUBBS: And I want to make sure that

20 this is in line, Clint, with what we -- is this your

21 understanding? Does it -- it follows --

22 MR. CROOKSHANKS: Yeah.

23 MR. TUBBS: Okay.

24 MR. CROOKSHANKS: You know, I think -- I

25 guess at the end, we can -- I can talk about where we
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1 are and what we expect as far as our recommendation

2 goes.

3 MR. TUBBS: All right.

4 MR. DENTON: Okay. Just to finish with

5 that.

6 MR. GARVENS: Go -- go back to it.

7 MR. DENTON: Okay.

8 MR. GARVENS: Since it is sort of a summary

9 of what we were supposed to learn, I mean, Jimmy

10 summarized it, I don't know if we need the -- so we did

11 this testing recommended by the NTSB. It clearly

12 showed the root cause is out-of-temperature operation,

13 it validated that the cylinders are safe when operated

14 legally as designed, and we made this similar

15 presentation to the NTSB earlier, which received a

16 positive response at the time.

17 MR. DENTON: I guess to go back through the

18 agenda again, we've covered all the way up to the

19 cylinder safety program presentation and we've got --

20 you know, touched on the FEA.

21 I don't know, Don, if you've got your

22 simulation ready or if you want to do that now.

23 MR. GILLESPIE: I could do that. I don't

24 know. It's -- it's -- I would rather say we do that

25 after, if people are interested in seeing it.
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1 MR. TUBBS: Okay.

2 MR. DENTON: Okay.

3 MR. GILLESPIE: It's kind of a just a show

4 and tell, but if they are interested, yes, I can pull

5 it up.

6 MR. DENTON: Okay. So that's --

7 MR. TUBBS: Is it -- is it really going

8 to -- right now, will it -- how much will it add to our

9 understanding? I think for the few of us that are --

10 for -- for most of us engineers it's going to be pretty

11 good, but it might not be that interesting to the legal

12 side of the --

13 MR. GILLESPIE: I just think what we are

14 really talking about here is the temperature and the

15 cause of the -- of the cracking on the heads and I can

16 show this, but it's really we're talking about your

17 data and what we have shown already, and the curves

18 that are showing at 460 going up to 520 you're

19 starting -- you're starting to get that inflection

20 point where you are increasing, and that's the data.

21 That's the bottom line data that they are talking about

22 in this, is that the cracks aren't coming about due to

23 some other event, it is due to the temperature that the

24 engines are running at. And as he has discussed

25 there's all kinds of reasons possibly for that, but the
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1 bottom line for them is the temperature is causing

2 this.

3 MR. GARVENS: I just want to verify, Jimmy,

4 on the question that Fran asked earlier:

5 The way you phrase it was all failures that

6 we have seen would be covered by that Service Bulletin;

7 is that what you intended to ask?

8 MS. COX: That list of serial numbers, if

9 that -- they would be included in this?

10 MR. TUBBS: Not all of them, no.

11 MR. CROOKSHANKS: All the failures are

12 included in the serial number range in our

13 recommendation.

14 MS. COX: But not on this list.

15 MR. GARVENS: And we don't intend to say --

16 like Jimmy said, there's situations, operational

17 situations where you can't protect against. If it's at

18 650 degrees, the head will slip off, and if it's at 600

19 degrees, it's a -- it will severely compromise the

20 cylinder.

21 MR. DENTON: If it is operated outside the

22 design limits.

23 MR. GILLESPIE: And this is where they have

24 also provided, as Jimmy says, the margin. By not just

25 saying, well, we're going to not look at anything
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1 within the design limits, they're looking at anything

2 below 11-thousandths interference. So even engines

3 that are good, they're saying, hey, we'll even look at

4 some of them, a lot of them that are within design, but

5 because they may have been operated overtemperature

6 we'll even look at those.

7 MR. TUBBS: Okay. Don Kenton was -- it was

8 strongly suggested that we perform a Weibull type

9 statistical analysis a couple of years ago to try to

10 predict the failure rate going forward and so we

11 subscribed to that, I frankly not even knowing what a

12 Weibull analysis was at the time. And so Don conducted

13 some -- a Weibull analysis and then used also the

14 Crow-AMSAA technique to try to predict the failures for

15 the future, and the analysis showed that we should by

16 this time, between -- after 6-2 or from cylinders

17 produced since the -- I believe the end of 2006, today

18 we should have had 35 cylinders fail or 34 cylinders

19 fail. Crow-AMSAA predicted that we would have about 12

20 of those cylinders fail. As of the time that we walked

21 in this morning, as far as we knew, we had zero. And

22 so Don went back and wrote another -- the other report

23 that basically acknowledges that there are factors that

24 you just can't put into that kind of an analysis and

25 that the analysis did not correctly predict the
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1 failures, and I think his report is in the --

2 MR. GARVENS: Tab 23.

3 MR. TUBBS: Correct. And basically in his

4 inimitable way, says it just didn't work, the analysis

5 is not accurate.

6 MS. COX: That doesn't match this post 6-2

7 report.

8 MR. GARVENS: What do you mean?

9 MR. CROOKSHANKS: No, these are the

10 anticipated. This is the Weibull analysis of the

11 anticipated failure.

12 MS. COX: So that's from this point

13 forward? It doesn't include these that are on the

14 list?

15 MR. CROOKSHANKS: This is a statistical

16 estimate of what should happen based upon the Weibull

17 parameters that he presented a year ago when we were

18 here.

19 MR. TUBBS: Right. So from a year ago to

20 now.

21 MR. DENTON: To now. This is --

22 MR. CROOKSHANKS: It should be like this

23 but it's not.

24 MR. TUBBS: I'm sorry, I was not clear, and

25 I'm sorry, but his report talks about from the time
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1 that he presented the report to what was anticipated to

2 have happened, and the anticipation in that time frame

3 was that we would have certain numbers of failures.

4 MS. COX: That only covers the past year;

5 is that --

6 MR. TUBBS: I believe that's about right.

7 MR. GARVENS: His first report was dated

8 what?

9 MR. CROOKSHANKS: These are predicted

10 numbers. These have nothing to do with what happened

11 in actuality.

12 MR. DENTON: It's saying if you use a

13 Weibull analysis it would predict that there would be

14 approximately 17 failures of 6-2 and, you know, 18

15 failures of post 6-2 in this one -- in this year.

16 There would be, you know, if you used the Crow-AMSAA

17 method, there would be eight failures of 6-2 and seven

18 failures of post 6-2. And there were in fact zero

19 failures of either. So that's basically predicted --

20 two predicted methods versus the actual is what you are

21 seeing on this chart.

22 MR. HARMON: Would you happen to know how

23 many cylinders were returned in the last year with

24 cracks in that area that we are talking about?

25 MR. TUBBS: We don't have any.
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1 MR. HARMON: You have no cylinders returned

2 in the last year with cracks?

3 MR. TUBBS: None. Zero.

4 MR. DENTON: Correct.

5 MR. HARMON: Not separated --

6 MR. TUBBS: Actually last 18 months.

7 MR. HARMON: Okay. Not separated heads

8 but just --

9 MR. TUBBS: Not cracked, not separating

10 heads --

11 MR. HARMON: Warranty data, no warranty

12 claims --

13 MR. TUBBS: Not in that area. Not -- not

14 there.

15 MR. STOLLER: Similar to we said that the

16 Safety Recommendation A-12-7 should be reelevated, we

17 are proposing that the same thing happen with the

18 analysis behind a possible NPRM, that we are sharing

19 new information, that we have discovered through our

20 research this last year and we believe that recalling

21 and replacing cylinders would cause an unwarranted

22 burden on the GA, general public, the flying public,

23 affecting approximately 10,000 aircraft, that we have

24 talked to some of our customers and they are very --

25 that are engine shops, and they are very concerned
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1 about field removal and replacement of a large number

2 of cylinders, that that would create in itself a safety

3 risk.

4 Can you explain, do you want to explain

5 what some of the issues are with --

6 MR. TUBBS: The big -- the big issue is

7 that when you unbolt the cylinders, you also remove the

8 clamp-up forces on the crankcase. And this is so

9 critical. When we build an engine in our shop, we will

10 not assemble the engine together, the crank cases

11 together until we can have the cylinders on and bolted

12 within a couple of hours. But just because of the fact

13 that when you let things loose, bearings can shift, you

14 can have -- and you have to clamp that bearing with a

15 good 2,000 psi pressure to hold it in place, and you're

16 totally releasing those clamp-up forces. And the

17 companies that are our major customers are very

18 concerned about that because a lot of times in the

19 field they'll take cylinders off and let them sit for

20 three or four days and then put the new cylinders back

21 on. There's nothing that tells you you've got either a

22 time constraint or do them one at a time. You pull

23 them -- they pull them all off and then put them all

24 back on. And most of the time it works just fine.

25 Some of the time -- sometimes it doesn't. And that's a
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1 big warranty consideration for them -- for them that

2 they are very concerned about.

3 MR. STOLLER: And in addition, those

4 cylinders were originally broken in, at least the ones

5 that were installed in a large reputable engine shop,

6 they were broken in in a test cell. Now these people

7 are going to be attempting to break in these

8 cylinders --

9 MR. TUBBS: Out on the ramp.

10 MR. STOLLER: -- either on the ground or

11 after takeoff --

12 MR. TUBBS: Right.

13 MR. STOLLER: -- which again exposes the --

14 the cylinders to a new risk.

15 MR. TUBBS: Right. Exactly.

16 MR. STOLLER: Then in addition, simply

17 replacing cylinders will not address what we have

18 discovered and consider to be the root cause of adverse

19 operating conditions; they would be installed and go

20 back into the same environment they were in before.

21 MR. DENTON: Move back to a -- that's the

22 end of our presentation. Basically come back to a

23 summary of our key points:

24 The fact that there have been no

25 fatalities, no injuries and no accidents; the design of
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1 AEC cylinders exceeds FAA airworthiness standards; the

2 manufacture of AEC cylinders is within design

3 parameters or approved FAA design parameters; operating

4 environment is the cause of failures; our cylinders are

5 safe when operated within published operating limits;

6 field replacement of cylinders causes significant

7 safety risks; and head-barrel separations are an

8 industry-wide issue caused by adverse operating

9 conditions.

10 Our meeting objectives were to prevent an

11 unwarranted action on the AEC 520 TITAN cylinders and

12 to prevent unnecessary safety risks caused by an

13 unwarranted action; also demonstrated that the root

14 cause of head-barrel separation is adverse operating

15 conditions; and establish that the design and

16 manufacture of AEC cylinders exceeds FAA airworthiness

17 standards; and we believe that there is no basis for

18 removal of AEC cylinders from the field.

19 MR. TUBBS: It might be good maybe, Clint,

20 for you to address some of this.

21 MR. CROOKSHANKS: Sure. So I'll just kind

22 of give you our perspective from what we have seen.

23 As you know, back in February we issued a

24 recommendation. The recommendation asked the FAA to

25 require repetitive inspections of ECI cylinder
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1 assemblies produced between May '03 and October 2009

2 with a serial number range going from 7709 to 52884

3 that are installed on TCM model 520 and 550 engines and

4 removal of those cylinder assemblies once they reached

5 the engine manufacturer's recommended normal time

6 in-service between overhauls. So that was our

7 recommendation issued.

8 We developed the recommendation throughout

9 meetings with Pete, meetings with AEC, we were all on

10 the same page at that time when we issued that

11 recommendation.

12 Now there's obviously some new information

13 out there.

14 I will say that in my 10 years at the Board

15 and in talking to the rest of the people that have been

16 there, especially the folks in our Safety

17 Recommendations Department that track these things, is

18 we have never had an occasion where the FAA has gone

19 over and above what we have recommended. They

20 always -- or generally come back and say, "Well, we'll

21 give you almost everything you want, but not quite."

22 And then we have several processes for how we go about

23 classifying recommendations.

24 So we get a response back from the FAA and

25 we have several ways of classifying. We can approve
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1 that response as an acceptable response, we can approve

2 a response as an acceptable alternate response, or we

3 can just say, "You know what? We don't approve and we

4 don't like what you did. We ask to reconsider." If

5 they don't reconsider, then we'll just close it as an

6 unacceptable response.

7 So there are several ways we can go about

8 addressing the recommendation.

9 In our mind, when -- when AEC came to us a

10 couple of weeks ago, they asked us to rescind our

11 recommendation and we simply cannot do that. Our

12 recommendation was issued to the FAA, not to AEC, so we

13 don't have a process for rescinding it. We need a

14 response from the FAA in order to do anything with that

15 recommendation. We have an interim response from the

16 FAA that says the last response said that we would have

17 a draft NPRM by August 31st of 2012, and we all know

18 that that hasn't happened but we are still waiting for

19 that next letter from the FAA that says, hey, this is

20 what we've done.

21 You guys as the FAA are the only people

22 that can respond to our recommendation.

23 Now, you could come back and say, well, we

24 think, you know, we think we should do this and this

25 and this, and we'll evaluate that if it meets our
Job No. 15494

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1 recommendation and classify it accordingly.

2 In our mind, we've looked at all the data

3 that we have and we've looked at all the cylinders

4 within that serial number range. A big chunk of those

5 cylinders from 7709 to thirty -- I think it's 33696,

6 those are all covered by an existing Service Bulletin

7 written by ECI and approved by the FAA. That Service

8 Bulletin asks for repetitive inspections and then

9 removal at TBO. We would sup -- we support that

10 Service Bulletin but would like to see that made

11 mandatory through an AD, so that's -- we would like

12 06-02 or 06-2 to be made mandatory repetitive

13 inspections, removal at TBO.

14 The following cylinders that go beyond

15 that, so 33697 through 52884, are these post 6-2

16 cylinders where we -- we are aware of eight failures of

17 those cylinders and we still support repetitive

18 inspections and removal at TBO of those cylinders, so

19 basically taking the same actions that are in 6-2 and

20 extending them out there to 52884.

21 Now with some of the new data we have from

22 AEC and from their testing, they've shown that there is

23 a period of time starting, I can't -- I don't have

24 the -- 32884 onward where they know the assembly

25 information, they track the assembly, they know the
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1 interference fit and we know based on their testing

2 that they've -- they've shown us the data that shows at

3 anything above 11-thousandths of interference fit, even

4 when operated at higher temperatures, you still have

5 enough margin to not cause a fatigue crack in that

6 cylinder head. So we're fully in support of maybe not

7 including those cylinders.

8 Those cylinders where we have a known

9 interference fit and it's above this -- this limit

10 where they know they can have margin, we -- maybe we

11 don't have to do anything there. Anything below

12 11-thousandths or 11-thousandths and below, we are

13 still standing by our recommendation that says we would

14 like repetitive inspection and removal at TBO.

15 Any questions?

16 MR. VICKERS: Is any of this affected by

17 cylinders that have gone through TBO, gone back, got

18 reconditioned and then put back in service?

19 MR. CROOKSHANKS: In our minds, if they've

20 reached TBO, they should be basically scrapped.

21 So what happens to those that have already

22 gone beyond TBO? In our mind, they're going to have

23 to -- they're going to have to come out of service.

24 But that's up to -- that's up to the FAA. You know, we

25 are a very powerless organization. The only thing we
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1 can do is make recommendations based on safety and

2 that's through a lot of work on our part, this is the

3 recommendation that we came up with. At the time, it

4 was supported by AEC, and I think now even with the new

5 data AEC supports what we would do with this

6 recommendation or how we might respond to this

7 recommendation with the 6-2 cylinders, the post 6-2

8 cylinders and then the known assembly information.

9 MR. GARVENS: I'd like to know if you guys

10 agree that operating planes over their design limit is

11 a serious safety concern.

12 MR. BENNETT: Now, why would you want a

13 conclusion like that in the transcript?

14 MR. GARVENS: I don't know.

15 MR. CROOKSHANKS: Is it --

16 MR. GARVENS: Or we have no feedback.

17 MR. GILLESPIE: No, no, you're asking a

18 question.

19 MR. NASH: What is the difference between

20 design limit and legal limit?

21 MR. TUBBS: It should be design limit.

22 MR. NASH: Okay.

23 MR. TUBBS: Because the -- you know, the

24 applicant establishes a design limit. The FAA verifies

25 that and you test to it.
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1 MR. NASH: So that's --

2 MR. STOLLER: There's a regulatory

3 requirement to operate within those limits. That was

4 what we were trying to capture.

5 MR. NASH: Right. But we know the pilot's

6 not going to operate within legal limits; he's going to

7 operate within design limits.

8 MR. TUBBS: Hopefully.

9 MR. NASH: Hopefully. Yes.

10 MR. GILLESPIE: Does anyone have any

11 additional concerns?

12 MR. BENNETT: I have one. Your attorney

13 indicated that you would not be providing any

14 proprietary data and that all information that you

15 would be presenting during this meeting would

16 therefore -- she had no objections to going into the

17 docket, the public docket. At the start of the meeting

18 you indicated you had proprietary information at tab

19 22.

20 MR. TUBBS: I did say that, and --

21 MR. STOLLER: Can we take a look at it --

22 MR. TUBBS: Let's take a look at it.

23 MR. STOLLER: -- and give an opportunity

24 to --

25 MR. TUBBS: -- and we can -- maybe we can
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1 just remove that.

2 MR. BENNETT: Well, since you've already

3 given it to us for consideration, now --

4 MR. STOLLER: Remove --

5 MR. BENNETT: -- it's going to be part of

6 the record.

7 MR. STOLLER: I meant remove the

8 restriction.

9 MR. TUBBS: Right.

10 MR. STOLLER: Not remove the data.

11 MR. BENNETT: I would -- I would ask that

12 you reevaluate whether or not that is proprietary

13 information.

14 MR. TUBBS: I believe that I took -- let

15 me -- let's check it. I think I took the numbers off,

16 obscured the numbers that were proprietary. But let me

17 verify that.

18 MR. BENNETT: Thank you.

19 MR. SHARON: Along those same lines, will

20 we get a copy of -- that is the new --

21 MR. TUBBS: Yes.

22 MR. SHARON: -- tab 14?

23 MR. TUBBS: Absolutely. You will get --

24 MR. DENTON: You will get a copy. I've

25 already made a note of that. You will get this copy.
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1 MR. GILLESPIE: If you want, I have a -- if

2 they'd like it now, I have a flash drive you can use to

3 provide it to them.

4 MR. DENTON: I need to get ... okay.

5 MR. BENNETT: Jimmy, I think you said you

6 also had something at tab 14 at one point as well, so

7 you might want to change that.

8 MR. TUBBS: I'm sorry?

9 MR. BENNETT: You also mentioned something

10 at tab 14.

11 MR. TUBBS: This is the only one that I had

12 proprietary. Last night I went in and cleaned it up

13 with the numbers right here. So it's now not

14 proprietary.

15 MR. BENNETT: It's sanitized.

16 MR. TUBBS: It's sanitized.

17 MR. BENNETT: So you have nothing

18 proprietary in the packet.

19 MR. TUBBS: Nothing proprietary.

20 MR. BENNETT: Good. Thank you.

21 MR. MAGUIRE: What do we do with the

22 material that's marked proprietary?

23 MR. BENNETT. It's marked but it is not --

24 MR. HAKALA: Is it marked as proprietary?

25 MR. TUBBS: What we need to do is give you
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1 an updated first page without that disclaimer on it.

2 MR. BENNETT: But your representation that

3 it is not is fine for my purposes.

4 MS. COX: Any more questions? Do you-all

5 have anything else to present?

6 MR. GILLESPIE: That is all.

7 MR. TUBBS: No.

8 MS. COX: Okay. We appreciate what you had

9 to present, then.

10 MR. STOLLER: And we appreciate everyone's

11 time. Thank you all very much.

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1 STATE OF TEXAS )

 )

2 COUNTY OF TARRANT )

3 REPORTER'S CERTIFICATION

4 I, Joseph D. Hendrick, a Certified Shorthand

 Reporter in and for the State of Texas, do hereby

5 certify that the foregoing 152 pages contains a true

 record of the ECI/NTSB/FAA MEETING held on February 14,

6 2013 at the FAA Southwest Regional Offices, 2601

 Meacham Boulevard, Fort Worth, Texas.

7

 Certified this 21st day of February, 2013.

8

9

 _____________________________

10 Joseph D. Hendrick, CSR #947

 Expiration Date: 12/31/14

11 Merit Court Reporters, LLC

 Firm Registration #133

12 307 West 7th Street, Suite 1350

 Phone: 817-336-3042

13 Fax: 817-335-1203

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