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I finally stopped using safety wire on my own plane's oil filter, and now I'm second guessing 15 years of habit
For 15 years I twisted safety wire on every filter I touched, including my own Cherokee, and last month my IA showed me he just uses a torque wrench and a marker stripe on his. I watched him do it at his hangar in Tulsa, and he says he has not had one back off in 20 years of annuals. Now I'm torn, because my gut says wire is free insurance, but his point is that a properly torqued filter does not move and the wire just makes guys lazy about checking torque. So which is it, do you wire everything no matter what, or have you switched to torque and a paint mark like he did?
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milaw149d ago
A torque wrench and a paint stripe actually catch MORE problems than safety wire does, if you think it through. The wire only keeps the filter from spinning off, it says nothing about whether the filter was crushed on at 400 inch pounds and the gasket is now glued to the housing. The stripe does both jobs, it shows you the torque was right AND gives you a quick visual every preflight. Torque and mark also beats wire for the guy who does his own oil changes in a cold hangar, because twisting .032 wire in 20 degree weather with gloves on is how you stab yourself and bleed on the cowling. His 20 years of annuals without a backoff is not luck, it is proof the torque spec does the work.
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