Return To Main PageAlternator bracket crack on the Stratus Subaru EA-81
On Thursday 5/23/02 I did my normal preflight where I pull the top cowl and go over the engine pretty thoroughly. All looked good and I proceeded to take up a fellow worker for a 1.3 hour uneventful flight.
Skip ahead to 5/27/02 when my wife Carol and I went to the airport to take a nice Memorial Day flight. Again I pulled the top cowl to inspect the engine. Found the alternator belt lose?? Upon further investigation, I notice that the entire alternator was lose!! Looking further still I discovered that two of the welded tabs on the alternator mounting bracket were broken clean off!!! The engine now has 130 hours.
Took some photos, pulled the alternator and took some more photos (see them below). The tabs had broken just past the welds. All mounting bolts were tight when I removed the alternator so the breakage was not caused by lose hardware induced vibration.
I will take the pieces to my local welder and see if he thinks it will hold up if repaired or should I purchase a new one from Mykal at Stratus. I will forward the photos to Mykal and see what he has to say also.
Moral of this story is do a thorough preflight. I ALWAYS pull the top cowl and this is the second piece of hardware I have found broken and ready to fail. I'm sure the alternator would have come completely off on the next flight. It may or may not have fallen into a bad place but one thing is for sure, the charging would have stopped and so would the water pump as it is driven by the same belt.
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