Jeff wrote:

 

My recommendation to all that have been burned by this individual is to contact the FAA and complain about the unairworthy product put out by Performance. You might make a difference and save someone's life. Start with the FSDO in your area or his.

 

I concur, guys. We don't want any people killed and we don't want him putting any more engines into the fleet.  Those that are in the fleet bear careful watching, and pilots behind them need to adjust their risk profiles to include a higher probability of an engine failure. Day VFR over flat terrain would go a long way to  mitigating what is clearly an elevated engine risk.

 

I am out of the USA, but have a contact in the FAA watching over the investigation of broken rocker arm in my engine that has now been returned to  Continental.  Some may recall a copy of the defect report I received from my engine builder and posted here.  It showed a number of parts such as starter gear train, alternator drive gear, and other parts worn beyond usable limits in spite of the fact that I only put 160 hours on the engine.  The crankcase had a crack, and the big rod ends were oval, probably due to sloppy machining during reconditioning.

 

Several LML posters have written to me privately reporting similar types of faults, cracked crankcases, paint under cylinder mating surfaces and other indications of poor workmanship and use of unserviceable parts. I think that the count is now up to six engines at Monty Barrett's shop that came from Ron Munson's shop and ended up torn down with questionable findings. 

 

Here is my conjecture: Ron made his reputation with high performance racing engines. Asked for experimental non-racing engines, he complied and business boomed.  He was not up to managing the rate of growth or increased size of the enterprise, subcontracted a lot of work out to el cheapo suppliers, and used parts not suitable for certified engines to improve his margins when the cash flow crunch began to hit. (You cannot grow faster than your return on equity without increasing debt load. Counter-intuitively, rapid growth frequently leads to a cash crunch, and Ron got crunched big time leading to legal actions from suppliers.) When the cash crunch hits, you look for increasing profit margins to get well.  Apparently that meant cutting a lot of corners, hiring the B team to assemble engines and using non-servicable parts.  When they come from the junk bin (“After all, it is only a starter gear…”) your profit margins skyrocket.

 

This is all pure conjecture on my part, based on shreds of evidence here and there.  But whatever the true story, the net result is the same.  Safety has been badly compromised in our fleet.  The FAA needs to know and watch out for similar such scams and any after-effects of this one.  Pilots of these engines need to up the caution factor substantially, and practice lots of forced landings.

 

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

 

Fred Moreno