AOPA Pilot Magazine - July 2019 - 97

More important, I had difficulty believing the owner had a valid claim against
Continental. The company clearly met its
"duty to warn" by issuing SB14-2, and would
argue that the current and previous owners of the Liberty XL2 knew or should have
known that failure to perform the cluster
gear compatibility inspection could result
in precisely the kind of engine damage that
the current owner was now facing.
"If you have a valid beef with anyone,"
I told the owner, "it should probably be
with the IAs who repeatedly performed
annual inspections on the airplane without performing the inspection called for
by Continental." I hastened to point out,
however, that the IAs did not have any regulatory obligation to comply with SB14-2
or any other service bulletin for a Part 91
aircraft. There was never any airworthiness directive mandating compliance with
SB14-2 because the FAA did not determine
that the cluster gear incompatibility represented an unsafe condition.
"I'm guessing you're probably not really
interested in suing your mechanic," I added.
"You probably want him to continue working on your airplane, and anyway he's
probably not a high-net-worth individual
worth suing."
CATASTROPHIC DAMAGE?

It struck me that what put this owner into
a litigious frame of mind was not really the
unexpected cost of repairing his engine,
but rather his conviction that the damaged
crankshaft cluster gear could have gotten
him hurt or killed had he not detected the
problem prior to takeoff.
Frankly, I didn't believe this. Any metal
chipped off the cluster gear would have
fallen into the oil sump. Any large pieces-
larger than about 1/16 inch-would have
been caught by the suction screen on the
oil pickup tube. Smaller pieces might have
made it through the suction screen and the
oil pump, but would have been caught by the
oil filter and not gotten any farther. Only if
the oil filter became clogged with thousands
of metal particles would it have been possible for the oil filter bypass valve to open
and permit metal to enter the oil galleries
and contaminate the bearings and possibly
damage the crankshaft.
aopa.org/pilot AOPA PILOT | 97

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AOPA Pilot Magazine - July 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Pilot Magazine - July 2019
