I need the collective experience and advice of the group to advise on the situation below, esp. from our A&Ps on the list. The $-amount of the charges isn't the main issue (everything is more expensive in SoCal.), but on the sequence of events, and whether charging for the second round was legitimate, or whether the problems should have been caught on the annual. Please forgive the amount of detail and wordiness here, but I'm not sure what will be meaningful, so I'm including everything. Something just doesn't seem quite right, but maybe it's my inexperience...
In mid-June, I flew my Ercoupe to El Monte & left it with the A&P for its annual while I went out of town. On the flight to El Monte, I noticed the engine sounding rough, and on the run-up, the L mag had dropped noticeably more. This was a new problem & I duly reported it to the A&P when I left it with him for annual. He called me with the diagnosis that the L mag distributor block was cracked and should be replaced. In all, he had it ~ 3 weeks, and was a day late getting it ready for me to pick up. The labor items on that bill read: "1. Annual inspection 2. Oil Change & filter - Shell 100W Plus 4 Qts 3. Left mag drop - replaced #1 bottom lead, removed left mag - replaced block and gear & retimed both mags to correct timing. 4. Replaced air filter 5. Cleaned fuel filter 6. Installed vertical card compass & adj." (I had asked to get rid of the old leaking fluid-type.) The total labor charged was 14.5 hrs. (of which he said about 10 hrs. is for the Annual), total labor charge = $1160. The parts list included "oil filter $29.50, air filter 10.95, mount $65., vert card compass $329, ign. lead $93.90, mag. block $91.43, kit gear $89.43" (not sure what that is). The total amount of the bill was just under $2000. -- maybe 1/4 of that was for the new compass & mount. When I picked it up, 3 things had not been addressed: he wrote down correctly in the logbook that the ELT battery was due for change Apr. '08, but then didn't read accurately the date he wrote, so he didn't order or change the ELT battery...and that meant I would have to fly it back to him again for that. (That's a half-hour flight each way.) He omitted to stop-drill a small crack on the edge of the nose cowling that had been on my list. And the exhaust pipe was still hitting the cowling at the edge of the hole it comes out of, which had also been on my list (later determined to be because a cowling clamp was loose, I think he said; see below; but why wasn't that caught on the annual when it had been on the squawk list for the annual?). I picked it up on a Wednesday afternoon, and flew it the half-hour trip home. I didn't fly it again until Saturday a.m., when I flew it over to Long Beach (about a 20 min. flight), intending to help fly some kids at the Young Eagles rally. But once I landed, it wouldn't start up again. That's after less than 1 hr. total flight time since the Annual. I killed about 2 hrs. trying to get it running, with the help of a half-dozen EAA old-timers and the CAP flight line mechanic. The starter sounded normal, but nothing "caught." I tried to reach the A&P, but didn't hear back from him until Sunday night. I had to leave my plane at LGB that Saturday, and one of the EAA guys flew me back to my airport. This ruined my flying plans for both that day and the EOC Region 7 event the next day. It also killed another half-day of my time on Monday to go meet the A&P back at Long Beach, where he finally got it to start -- after a lot of trouble. He diagnosed the ignition switch as old, and advised I replace it at a cost of about $50, and to do that I would have to fly it out to him at El Monte again, which I did the following Friday. On that Friday, it took two tries & some nursing it, but I did get it started, and I arrived at El Monte at 3 p.m. I asked the A&P if timing (which did not feel smooth to me, despite having been billed for timing above) could have anything to do with the starting problems. He replaced the ignition switch (and I now wonder whether that was even necessary), and he eventually found that BOTH mags had "very weak sparks" and he changed the points & condensors, timed it again, and it ran WAY better. In all, we were there from 3-6 p.m. (3 hrs., though it looked like at least part of that time he had an assistant working with him on it). The bill I've now received in the mail reads: Labor 1. Replace ELT battey - parts only labor N/C 2. ACRT WON'T Start in LGB airport gas only labor N/C [i.e. he did not charge for his time to come to LGB the previous Monday to get it started up so I could fly it out, but he did charge $50 for his van gas to drive out there] 3. Replaced ignition switch - very old original 4. Found weak sparks on mags - removed left & right mags. Left mag - reset point gap & retimed . Replaced points and condenser in Right mag. Cleaned & lubed rear bearing set gap. Retimed to engine. Reinstalled cowling. After ground running engine to insure good starting & no problems occur in the future. Labor: 4.6 hrs. @ $85/hr [i.e. hourly labor charge appears to have increased since the previous week, and the charge was 4.6 hrs (does that incl. assistant?) between 3-6 p.m.] Parts: ELT battery $38., Ign. switch 98.95, TCM mag points $56, TCM Condensor $37.80 Van Gas: $50 Total bill $690.78 I don't know enough about mags to know whether -- when he replaced the "mag distributor block & gear and re-timed the engine" during the Annual -- should he have caught the fact that both mag sparks were extremely weak then?...or could both of them have failed simultaneously and suddenly within the first hour of flying post- annual? Was it legitimate to charge for re-timing twice? There was an obvious and significant difference to the way the engine felt after the second time, that was not there the first time -- even to my amateur perceptions -- making me wonder if the timing had in fact been adjusted properly (or at all?) the first time around. Given what else had been skipped from the list I'd given him to do on the annual, and given that I experienced mag problems again almost immediately after he diagnosed and replaced the L mag distributor block, I am wondering if both rounds of problems look unrelated and both rounds of charges look legitimate to the experienced eyes on our list. Also was it legitimate to replace the ignition switch anyway, just because it's "old"? If so, why didn't he say that or do that on the annual inspection? After replacing a mag distributor block, wouldn't one test it and see that the spark is "weak" at that time? I don't want to raise questions about his charges to him, if this sequence looks plausible to your experienced eyes; it is very, very difficult to find any A&Ps in SoCal who know Ercoupes, so I don't want to tick this one off if these generally look ok. But I also don't feel good about the mag problems not having been caught on the annual (but don't know if they should have been????), given that he did replace the L mag distributor block on it during the annual. And I reallllllly don't feel good about how much my flying plans got cancelled because of it, nor good about how many hours of my own time, av gas, and car gas this cost. I need at least to understand how this could happen so immediately after the Annual, before paying the second bill. What do you all think? Thank you! Linda N3437H (Sky Sprite) L.A.
