Check your tailpipes at the muffler area for cracks/breaks. Just discovered on a 250 hour 2012 Husky with stock exhaust system tail pipe almost completely broken off, hanging by small piece of material. Solid on preflight inspection and on post flight inspection discovered loose tail pipe. Have not yet taken cowl off to inspect closer and determine where crack/break started. I will further investigate when I have more time. For now, I wanted to alert everyone to inspect this area of your exhaust system.

Kurt

G44 wrote:Check your tailpipes at the muffler area for cracks/breaks. Just discovered on a 250 hour 2012 Husky with stock exhaust system tail pipe almost completely broken off, hanging by small piece of material. Solid on preflight inspection and on post flight inspection discovered loose tail pipe. Have not yet taken cowl off to inspect closer and determine where crack/break started. I will further investigate when I have more time. For now, I wanted to alert everyone to inspect this area of your exhaust system.

Kurt

Wow, Kurt - thanks for the heads-up. Do you have video of the, uh *cough* "landing" by any chance?

Mahalo Kurt. Never hurts to look closely at the exhaust (unless it's hot )

I known exhausts are pretty much expendable. But, 250TT? Seems like a major fabrication/material error to me.

My hangar neighbor in Honolulu flying a C172 lost parts of his exhaust over Upolu Point (west Hawaii). He did an emergency landing then flew home on Hawaiian to Oahu later that day...

Received a telephone call to help him ferry a new exhaust pipe to the Big Island. Upolu has treacherous trade winds (day and night). The trees are permanently bent over from the trades. There is no shelter so, working in 35knt gusts was a challenge. It worked and he got home.

TT unknown

Gave the tail pipe a good tug this morning before flying 15 minutes to breakfast, all was well, gave another tug before climbing in to head home, another 15 minute flight, checked good. As I was wiping the cowl down after pushing airplane into the hangar I discovered loose tailpipe! Yikes! One good tug and it would break off like a 6 year old kids loose tooth but I did not do that. I will remove cowl tomorrow, I was tight on time today.

No strange noise or vibration during the flight. This engine has a SUPER smooth 3 blade MT prop and has been balanced, this is by far the smoothest piston airplane I have ever flown! Really makes me wonder... I guess I will know tomorrow when I remove the cowl and muffler. I plan to send it out to Dawley tomorrow, good flying wx is upon us and I don't want to miss another day!

Oh ya, maybe I mentioned it earlier, maybe I didn't, but, the POS Slick mags on this 2012 engine were junk! Had to rebuild, everything in it was either shot or improperly assembled. 150 hours. Inspect your airplanes, engines and accessories closely guy's and gals!

Think about what you are flying over, engine could quit at any time, food for thought.

Kurt

Pilots sometimes inadvertently switch to off position on the mag switch during run up. The resulting backfire when the switched is turn back on can ruin a zero time exhaust in less than a second. This could be a possible cause of the failure you are referring to.

Never had a backfire during mag check, never went to off.

I'll get a backfire every so often during start up. So far, both pipes are still there!

Cary

In the event of a backfire check the intake system.

Kurt