Alternator Rebuilding

[Timothy Tate]

I read a lot about people removing and inspecting alternators every 500 hours because of the high failure rate. I've flown two IO 550 Barons over 900 hours and my current Baron 650 hours without ever removing an alternator or having one fail. Am I just lucky or have the majority of you exoerienced the same thing?

[Tom Pelz]

Tim,

I think that the issue is with the bigger alternators.   The smaller ones appear to have minimal problems.

Considering the fact that a failure of the alternator may require an engine tear down, I would seriously consider having them checked.

I would ask my IA why then alternators have not been inspected.  I believe the document is:  BEECHCRAFT Service Bulletfn 0546-389 Rev. II or subsequent.



Tom