My First Owner Assisted Annual

After much research I decided that I would do an owner assisted annual on my 2004 SR22. I am a very meticulous person and pretty mechanical, so working on the plane really hasn't been all that big a deal. As it is, I do all the maintenance that I can legally get away with according to the FARs. I have a very competent mechanic (Glen) and he is pretty good about teaching me the aspects I need to do my part and by doing it myself it would save me a TON of money. In my area (Kansas City) there are only a couple Cirrus Certified Service Centers and all of them charge a flat rate of around $2400, just to inspect the aircraft. This does not include working on anything they find, but only on taking the plane apart, inspecting it, checking for ADs and SBs and put it back together. This is VERY pricey and quite frankly a rip off, because disassembly of the aircraft is really quite simple.

For my inspection, my mechanic and I looked over the Cirrus Maintenance Manual (CMM) and used the check list to determine what tasks were mine and what were his. We started out by conducting a before maintenance check of the aircraft where we started it up and ran the engine to test different aspects from fuel flow, to sensor readings to brake performance. One of the test was to go full throttle on the ground, which took both of us to stand on the breaks to ensure that we didn't move. With 310HP, it was damn near impossible to keep it from moving. The brakes held, but barely!

After Glen was happy, we then put it back in the hanger and I began to take apart my items. My focus was to take off the entire cowling, wheel pants, inspection covers all around the aircraft, and to completely remove all the seats, carpet, and inside inspection panels. I also changed the oil, removed the battery starter (I was having some issue with it, so Skytec told me to send it back since it was under warranty, and alternator #1. My alternator had been giving me some issues, so I had to get that off to send in and get repaired. All of this took me approximately 15 hours, although I think I could do it much faster the second time and also if I wasn't jaw jacking so much with everyone that stopped by.

Once it was all taken apart, Glen pulled out a flashlight and started checking everything out. After his inspection was complete, he then went around and greased everything that needed to be greased, put in some new sparkplugs, repacked my wheel bearings, flipped my main tires and put in new tubes (old ones had some creases that would become leaks). Glenn also did a compression test and we got #1-77/80, #2 77/80, #3 76/80, #4 70/80, #5 77/80, #6 77/80. Being that all my compressions are in the high 70s, my engine is doing good. My #5 exhaust valve seemed to be leaking a little, hence the 70/80, but when we reviewed the engine log books, we found that it had been 70/80 since the day it came from the factory and I haven't had any issues after 873.1 hours, so my mechanic said not to mess with it and keep running it. On another positive engine note, Glen told me that he was absolutely amazed at the condition of my engine. He said that he had never seen an engine before that was consistently leaned out and run at LoP (Lean of Peak). My engine had zero, zilch, none, nadda carbon or lead build up at all! In fact the insides were so clean, that you could literally read the serial numbers off of the pistols! He said that most the of the engines he works on are flight school engines, but he had never seen any engine this clean. It just goes to show you that if you run your engine properly and use the LoP methods, it will greatly reduce the wear on the engine. From much of my research, most Continental IO-550Ns like mine have very low compressions (50-60s) at this point and as they approach 1200 hours they are needing new cylinders. My appear to be running as strong (actually stronger) than when they were brand new. Hopefully this trend will continue!

The process of doing this annual has taken a pretty good chunk of time over numerous days. There have been delays since my mechanic has been sick and because I have had to wait on my alternator and starter to return. The only real squawk that we found was I had were two "T" fittings on the TKS system that appeared to be leaking. These we will have to disassembled and replace the o-rings and reassemble to fix. We are putting this off until we get the alternator back and reinstalled to verify exactly where the leak is coming from before we get too carried away. If we were to buy the parts from Cirrus, they would $57.16 for each "T" fitting, when all we will probably have to do is take them apart and fix the o-rings.

Other than fixing these fittings, the only other thing I had to do was replace two tubes in the main wheels, replace the spark plugs since the original Fine Wire Champion spark plugs had almost 900 hrs on them which is high and they can be prone to cracking and breaking, so I thought I had pushed them long enough. I also had to replace eight D-cell batteries in the ELT and Glen fixed a leaking valve gasket, but that was it. Now weather permitting (we just had a cold spell and more snow) and parts returning, we can start to put it all back together!