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My lead told me my torque stripe was hiding problems and I was mad for a week
About 8 months ago I was working a King Air 200 and did my usual thing, one long stripe on the bolt heads so I could eyeball the engine mount at a glance. My lead pulled me aside and said "that stripe just tells me you touched it, it doesn't tell me it's right." I was ticked off at first, I've been turning wrenches on turbines for 11 years and never had a comeback. But he was right, I'd been running the stripe over the torque wrench mark so I couldn't see if anything actually shifted. Now I do a short stripe at 90 degrees to each fastener and initial plus date it in the log, and it caught a loose clamp on a PT6 exhaust two months later. How do you all mark your hardware, am I the only one who was doing it lazy?
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ben_nguyen14d ago
That bit about the stripe just telling him you touched it hits home. Taking it a step further, the real trick is making the mark mean something to the next guy too, not just you. If you cross the torque wrench mark at 90 degrees, anybody pulling that panel six months later can see in two seconds that the bolt moved, whether it was you or the guy on the next shift. Write the date next to it and now the log and the hardware tell the same story. That loose clamp you caught on the PT6 exhaust is the whole point, that bolt walked and your own mark ratted it out before it turned into a fire on the ramp.
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