The before and after on this engine cowling I pulled off a 172 last week was wild

So I was doing a routine inspection on a Cessna 172 from 1998, (you know, the kind that's been flown by a flight school for like 20 years) and I popped the cowling off. The before was honestly embarrassing - there was this thick layer of oil and grime caked all over the baffle seals, like someone just sprayed it on and never wiped. I've seen worse, but this was bad enough that the rubber was starting to turn into goo. I spent about 3 hours with a scraper and some simple green, cleaning everything down to the metal. The after was night and day - the aluminum actually had a shine again, and I could see the cracks in the baffle I totally missed before. The cause was just years of oil leaks from a loose rocker cover gasket that nobody bothered to tighten. Has anyone else pulled a cowling and found a mess that turned out to be one dumb simple fix?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_thomas1mo ago

Buddy of mine found a dead mouse in his baffling once.

norag551mo ago

Oh jeez, that's rough. Reminds me of the time my neighbor found a whole family of raccoons living in his attic after a storm, he had to call someone to trap and relocate them. Did your buddy ever figure out how the mouse got in there in the first place?