Land and Hold Short

Last summer I managed to gear up my 210 in the middle of the Black Rock Desert and the insurance company and I agreed to have the plane trucked to a well known repair shop to have the (minor) repairs done. Because the prop hit the ground during the “roll out” the engine needed to have a tear down inspection. This really didn’t make much sense since the engine was at TBO anyway, so I opted to buy a new engine instead. The insurance company was very reasonable, and paid me what they would be out on the inspection. They also paid for part of the hanging of the new engine, so I would only be responsible for any extra work that was required to hang this engine vs. my old engine. I also decided to overhaul a few parts under the cowl, as well as have a few ADs on the plane taken care of.

The estimate I received from this well known and reputable shop was about $13,752k. This included overhaul of the Turbo and all its components (waste gate, controllers, etc). The only thing not included on this estimate was the inspection of my exhaust system, this was a blank item and the mechanic was supposed to get back to me on what that was going to cost before proceeding.

Fast forward 4 months, and a dozen phone calls to the shop where they never mentioned any extra work or parts. The plane was flown back to RHV and left for me. Yay! Many hours of rejoice. Final bill, $23,839.60. Yikes!@#$%. Why the big difference? 5 Months later, and many phone calls, I still can not tell you. I have had many conversations with the owner of the shop, and every time, he can not tell me where all this extra money was spent. This does not include the work he performed on the plane, that was already paid for by the insurance company. He did not log any of this work in my logs, nor did he file the 337 with the FAA for that work. On top of that, when the FAA asked him about this, he lied point blank and said the paperwork was filed. The 4 months I flew the plane before I realized the paperwork was not in order is possibly illegal, however the FSDO does tell me that since the mechanic flew the plane for 5 hours, including delivering it to me, they would not take any action against me since I could reasonable assume everything was in order.

At this point I have paid him $7500 of the estimated $13752, and retrieved my log books from him with the help of the local police. The FSDO had my regular mechanic inspect the work on the plane and sign it off saying it was done in a airworthy fashion, so the plane is now legal to fly again after a 2 month down time.

We’ve been unable to agree on any sort of compromise. At this point I do have some damage history on the plane I am unable to document repairs of. More then likely, those undocumented repairs devalue the plane by over $20k. He has also told me he will not provide my log entries and 337 forms if I only pay him the estimated amount. I have tried getting the insurance company involved, and they did speak with him on my behalf but they did not have any luck with him. This is before I knew about the missing log entries.

These sorts of things make me appreciate the good honest mechanics out there. I have been using the same IA for about 8 years now (I even followed him to a new shop), and I have never received a surprise bill from him. It is really too bad he didn’t think he had the manpower to do a major repair like a gear up (I asked, he thought it would just take him too long to get done since he is already booked up months in advance as it is).

What should I do? Pay? How much?