I Hate Fucking Carburetors

[Slick Goodlin]

Harry Ford was almost killed by a malfunctioning carburetor on his Kinner in his PT-22.

That’s hardly the carb’s fault, didn’t it have a jet fall out that had been improperly secured? That’s like saying Javier Arango was killed because his plane had an elevator.

[Colonel]

Correct. It was a maintenance-induced failure. The jet was secured
properly before the maintenance. The jet was not installed correctly
after the maintenance. This resulted in a

malfunctioning carburetor

which almost killed the pilot. Anyone interested in learning from that
mistake? Nah.

The point being, there are plenty of ways for carburetors to kill you,
and because of this I am not fond of them on aircraft. On a weed eater,
sure. Maybe a lawn mower.

Shall we talk about sinking floats next? Two-piece venturis, anyone?

I remember one of the 172's at my old FTU. The hardware on the carb
heat flapper came undone and went through the engine and beat the
shit out of the spark plugs and pistons and valves.

We need more of that.

It's incredible how something so simple, can fail in so many different
ways and kill so many people.

I've mentioned before that a friend of mine had a carb fail on a cub -
it stopped feeding fuel. So he flew to the next airport, squirting the
primer. His hand was pretty sore, but he figured out an alternate way
to deliver fuel to the engine. Ancient and uninteresting history.

[Colonel]

Ease of maintenance is not something people care about much, but it will kill you.

I learned this, working on Russian stuff. The L29/L39 trainers were built by the tens
of thousands in factories with not the greatest workers, and maintained by people that
may or may not have ever seen a tractor before. They were brilliantly designed to be
very forgiving of ground crew that didn't know very much.

This keeps pilots alive.

I remember changing the brakes on the L39 - it was a cinch. Faster than my Honda.
Then I was in the Vintage Wings hangar, looking at a flat-spotted tire on the F-86 - it
doesn't have anti-skid like the L39 - and they said it was a huge job to change a tire -
hundreds of little bolts had to be undone and redone, to change a tire.

What could possibly go wrong? Maintenance-induced errors, anyone? Are they worthwhile
trying to reduce? Nah.

The Avro Arrow was similarly designed by engineers that didn't give a shit about maintenance.

I don't know much compared to a Canadian, but I do know that if you make someone's
job easier, they are more likely to do it, and do it well.

Nah.

Talk to me about the design of the AK-47 with respect to field maintenance. With all due
respect to the vaunted M-16/AR-15 how well did it fare in Vietnam, when it was intentionally
deployed without maintenance kits or training, putting it on an equal footing with the AK-47?