Ouch, My Poor Wallet

[Bill Greenwood]

Man aviation is fun, but it sure is not free.
I fly a 1988 Beech B 36 Bonanza, very good plane, but it can be expensive to repair everything.
I have been having trouble with my King KFC 150 autopilot. It engages and works fine, but when I disengage it the pitch servo doesn't want to release, so that it tries to hold the pitch attitude level, and this makes it hard to descend. Shaking the yoke forward and back once will break the hold and you are back to normal.
So I called my expert avionics man, Bob Caswell, and he was very familiar with the problem which is the servo clutch.
The bad news is the price of a rebuilt one is $2500 plus 4 hours labor.
OUCH, and just when I thought the plane was doing pretty well.
The other bad news is that King was only required to support the autopilot for 7 years so parts may be hard to find.
I do use the autopilot, it is a safety item if you are flying in IMC and I use it on long legs like going to Oshkosh and back to let me relax in cruise and look at the chart or just sightsee.
So guess I'll do what is necessary to keep it working.
But I should be fine, after all I saved so much money at Airventure since they lowered the price of bottle water by a dollar. Let's see, 2 bottles a day for 5 days, so 10 total and spent $20 instead of $30, that is quite a saving. Now to find the other $2490.

[whatevrworks]

You just didn't drink enough water that week!!

[Mike M]

Weren't those 500ml bottles? I carry in my own bottle and refill at the fountains. I'd rather buy avgas for $6 a gallon than drinking water for $15.

[raytoews]

Wd40 on the clutch. Go in at night when there are no snoopy snitches around, take it apart and either lubricate or dismantle and repair it. Nobody knows the trouble you'll see, nobody knows but Jeeessus.

[vaflier]

Wd40 on the clutch. Go in at night when there are no snoopy snitches around, take it apart and either lubricate or dismantle and repair it. Nobody knows the trouble you'll see, nobody knows but Jeeessus.

Bad idea. Doesnt the clutch have a cork disc on it ???. It wont like WD 40

[Bill Greenwood]

Well, we replaced the servo just at my avionics man said and now it works just fine.

[Tessmacher]

Well, we replaced the servo just at my avionics man said and now it works just fine.

Mr. Greenwood:

Good for you. Glad it wasn't something that you could buy a small house for.

[prasmussen]

Speaking on the mobile device with an aviation supply house the other day. And complaining mildly about the cost of a part the very nice lady was selling me. Said she, "But you own an airplane, Sir" (company was in Georgia). I thought,"hmmmmm".