Vent: That one hangar in Burbank with the infamous oil separator

Tbh, I stopped by the Van Nuys maintenance facility last Thursday and spotted an oil separator rigged with a random hardware store clamp. It was holding a 150 psi line barely an inch from a hot exhaust manifold. Has anyone else dealt with sketchy field mods like that at smaller airports?

3 comments

3 Comments

susanm562d ago

Is it just me or does this feel like the same kind of thinking that makes people use paperclips to fix a phone charger? Like, we're all just one "good enough for now" away from a really bad day.

webb.ben2h ago

and that's exactly the thing @lopez.jana hit on - it's never just the part that fails, it's the whole chain reaction. I've seen a guy use a radiator hose clamp to patch a separator line on an old unit, swore it would hold "long enough to get parts." Too bad "long enough" turned into two seasons because he never got around to finding the right fitting. That's the dangerous part, you know? The temporary fix becomes the permanent solution just because nobody wants to do the job twice.

lopez.jana3d ago

Oh MAN, that is a disaster waiting to happen! I was just reading an article about field repairs at smaller fields and they mentioned oil separators specifically because people use whatever parts they have lying around. A hardware store clamp on a 150 psi line is basically a bomb waiting for the right vibration to pop it loose.