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Why does nobody talk about how a worn throttle cable feels before it lets go
Three weeks ago I was doing a preflight on a 172 at our ramp in Bakersfield and the throttle felt gritty through the whole range, not just stiff at idle. Pulled the panel and the cable housing had a flat spot worn into it where it rubbed the firewall for who knows how many hours. The owner said it had been that way since his last annual in Idaho and two other guys had flown it. I swapped it out and the difference on the ground run was night and day. How many of you catch stuff like this on the controls check versus only finding it when something actually snaps?
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dianaanderson6d ago
Wow, I have to say I see it kind of the other way on this one. A gritty throttle through the whole range is already a red flag, and honestly that should get caught at annual long before a preflight, not by the guy who happens to notice it three weeks later. The real problem in your story is not that pilots miss it on a controls check, it is that two other people flew a plane with a known bad cable and the owner let it slide since Idaho. I do check free and full travel on every preflight, but a worn spot inside the housing is not something you can see or feel from the cockpit until it is already bad. So I guess my pushback is this, we lean too hard on the preflight to catch stuff that belongs in the shop. Good on you for pulling the panel and swapping it, that is the part that actually saved somebody.
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