Pencil whipped annuals

[bryris]

So my airplane is in the shop for some skin cracking repair that was there when I bought it. They are resheeting part of the top of the wing. All is going pretty well so far, but they told me that it is obvious that the wing tips haven't been off in years. Supposedly, they are supposed to come off at every annual. The flexible brake lines were pretty rough, yet this thing was signed off just 4 months ago for an annual. This tends to throw into question the quality of the entire annual. So, I decided to go ahead and just have the annual done early. Last thing I need is to kill myself flying a mystery airplane around when the evidence suggested the annual/s have been largely pencil whipped under the previous ownership.

I am just curious how this would work in real life. You bring your airplane to a shop and they just don't do the work they are supposed to do and an ignorant owner pays full price and heads off? Or the shop says do items 1-10 and the owner says no?

Maybe I'm in left field here, but if I have enough money to own an airplane and am flying myself and my family around in it, if the mechanic says to fix something, I say for him to fix that thing. Is this attitude the exception to the rule?

Mechanics are in the business of making money, so it is in their best interest to recommend (honestly) when work needs to be done. This seems pretty uniform.

I just don't get it.

This airplane has no idea how much it lucked out in my buying it. I don't think this thing has ever been taken care of quite like this and it shows.

Its just $$, I guess.

Here are a few pics of the reskinning, in progress.

 

[kshaw]

 

[bryris]

 

[Unit74]

 

[MickYoumans]

 

[sierrakilo99]

 

[Tweety]

 

[cappy48]

 

[RickS]

 

[cappy48]